Alfred Arthur Robb, 1873 - 1936

By the death of Dr. A. A. Robb on 13 December, 1936, at his residence, Lisnabreeny House, Gastlereagh, at the age of 63, from heart weakness contracted a year before, one of the main protagonists in the scientific domain now known as relativity has passed away. This term in its recent technical sense connotes the relative character of all motions ; and its significance may perhaps be summarized by the statement that the cosmos in which the motions can be represented as occurring is a world expressed in terms of a calculus of pure vectors, or directed line arsegments labile along their lengths without an origin, any special universal frame of reference related to a space and time with regard to which movements have to be formulated being thus unnecessary and so irrelevant.