Robert Arthur Donkin

Robin Arthur Donkin FBA (born Robert Arthur) (1928–2006) was an English historian and geographer who served as a reader in Historical Geography in Cambridge University's Department of Geography in 1990. A fellow of the British Academy, Donkin published works on a wide range of subjects, including Cistercian monasteries, agricultural terracing, the history of pearls and pearl fishing, the Muscovy duck, the Guinea fowl, and the history of spices and aromatics.

Robert Donkin was born in 1928 in the town of Morpeth, Northumberland, where he received his education at Jarrow Grammar School, and later took geography in 1950 at King's College, Newcastle upon Tyne. In Durham University, Donkin completed his doctorate under M.R.G. Conzen, published later in 1957 as The Cistercian Contribution to the Geography of England and Wales in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.

Donkin also served in the British Armed Forces as a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. His National Service postings included Egypt and Jordan, where he saw field work. He was elected King George VI Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in 1955. It was here that he was influenced by the American cultural geographer Carl O. Sauer, and developed interest in agricultural origins and the aboriginal New World. Donkin returned to Britain in 1956, where he served on the staff of the University of Edinburgh Geography Department for the next two years.