At 74 years old, Professor Edward Robinson – one of the two 2008 recipients of Jamaica’s third highest honour, the Order of Merit – shows few signs of slowing down.

But it’s no surprise; it has been the story of his life.

“I will certainly keep working,” said Robinson, currently an emeritus professor at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, of life after work at the UWI.

“I’m not going to put my feet up and watch television. I have lots of things to do,” added the man who also heads the Marine Ecology Unit (MGU), based at the UWI, and which he set up in 2001.

The MGU does a variety of research focused primarily on coastal hazards at a time when the Caribbean is plagued by extreme weather conditions associated with climate change. For their efforts, they have been able to attract a lot of funding and last year won the Principal’s Research Award for the research project attracting the most research funds in the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences at the UWI. The winning project was entitled ‘Beach Erosion and Coastal Hazards’: Ensuring Safety (BEACHES).

Among the things on Robinson’s to-do list after the UWI is a book on Jamaica’s coastline that he hopes to put out in collaboration with some of his colleagues.

“I (also) have lots of data that I need to organise, but I am still playing with that,” he tells Environment Watch from his office at the Department of Geology and Geography on the Mona campus.

Robinson admits that the OM award – which is not given to more than two people in any one year or to anyone if the number of living members, other than honorary members, would by reason of the conferment be increased to more than 15 – had moved him.

“I was kind of surprised but very pleased, of course; it’s a great honour. I am very gratified to have received it. I think it is clear to me that it (my work) has to be more worthwhile than I thought at the time. It’s been a very varied career,” he said. “I think the university as a whole did well at the award ceremonies. It helps to focus the attention of the wider community on some of the achievements that the university has carried out.”

The professor, who is originally from Britain, is a trained geologist who started out working with the Jamaica Geological Survey in 1956, following his undergraduate work at Birmingham University.

“It was a very well-run establishment, relatively small at that time but we got a lot of field mapping of the island. It was still in the early stages when the mapping programme was very important because we needed to know what kind of rocks were in the different places. It coincided with the development of the bauxite industry so that we were well supported by government funds in those days,” recalled Robinson, who grew up in India up to World War II when he was sent back to England to live with his grandparents.

His father, Edward Robinson V, worked in the tea industry in India but was called up in the war. His mother, Marion Winnifred (also the name of the older of his two daughters) returned to England with him and his younger brother David.

He does not recall much of life in India but said it was there that he learnt to ride a bike and frequently went on walks with his father.

Following his return to Britain in 1942, Robinson enrolled in high school and later went to university to study geology and surveying, as well as petroleum engineering.

“At high school, our teacher had a double degree in Geology and Geography. We went on trips and he showed us rocks and things,” Robinson said, explaining his interest in geology. “I also had an uncle (Arthur) who was a geologist and he gave me a book on geology that I found interesting.”

In 1961 when the UWI started a Geology Department, Robinson applied for a position and was accepted. He had by this time been married to Jamaican Jeanne Mair for four years. The two tied the knot at St Margaret’s Church in Kingston in 1957, having met three years earlier at university in Britain.

Robinson undertook his doctoral studies while teaching at UWI and was awarded his PhD in 1969. For his thesis, he examined the rocks in eastern Jamaica.

“My special field was looking at the biostratigraphy of foraminifera (single cell organisms which may be used to date rocks. Fossil foraminifera are also useful in oil exploration),” he said.

Robinson gradually progressed up the ladder at UWI and became a professor in the 1970s. Toward the end of that decade, the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) was formed to organise a look for petroleum and other sources of indigenous energy on the island; he was seconded to work with them for two years.

“My job with PCJ was actually to investigate peat (found in morass) as a possible fuel source. So I ran a programme in the Black River morass and the Negril morass looking at peat sources to see whether they could be used as an alternative fuel source to oil,” he said.

He found a lot of peat, but the environmental risks were deemed to be too great. Asked whether peat is an option today, Robinson said: “If push comes to shove, then I suppose it could be used. It would be quite a sophisticated kind of endeavour because it has to be dried first. Peat was widely used as a fuel source in Ireland, Finland and Russia in the 20th century. So it was a mature industry in certain other places, so it could have been developed here.

“But it would leave a lake behind so. wild life would be adapting to a lake environment rather than a swamp. It certainly would be different. I don’t know whether it would be bad, but it would be different,” he noted.

Following his work with the PCJ, Robinson returned briefly to the UWI before heading to the United States for about eight years.

Initially, he worked with a service company for the petroleum industry in Houston and then did consultancy, before lecturing at Brice University. He subsequently moved to Miami and taught at Florida International University.

“And then I went to Caracas and worked as a consultant with the Venezuelan Oil Company for about a year and a half and then I came back to the UWI,” Robinson told Environment Watch.

But it wasn’t just to UWI that he returned, but to his island home.

“This is my home; I am married to a Jamaican,” he said.

Quizzed as to why he had chosen Jamaica to begin with, he said:

“It was more exciting than going to Ghana or Canada or Arabia, which were some of the possibilities I had. Jamaica has a sort of romantic background that was attractive and I thought I would like to go and see. That is why I became a citizen as soon as I was able to after Independence.”

But there is nothing so precious to the professor as his family. His two daughters and three grandchildren – whose photos he glances at ever so often during the interview – are his pride and joy.

He recalled the days when he took his girls with him to do field work.

“They used to hate geology. When I went on study leave, one of the places we looked at was Europe to look at fossils. They used to sit in the car cursing me, I suppose. Neither of my children has gone into geology,” he said chuckling.

It is unsurprising then that perhaps his one disappointment is that his daughters are divorced.

“I suppose I am a little disappointed that my children are divorced, but that’s the norm it seems these days. It didn’t used to be when I got married. But they are doing well. The grandchildren are all bright. It doesn’t really worry me,” he said.

For himself, he said he was lucky in love.

“I got married at 22, but I was lucky,” he said chuckling. “We’ve had our ups and downs, obviously. (But) It’s been very satisfying.”