had to leave the lad to his own devices, and the situation made him bitter and confused. Lonely and nearly penniless, hard-bitten Robert eventually made his way back to England. At first, one of his maternal aunts took him in, then he moved to Dorking to live with one of his mother's cousins, Adeline, the first wife of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. She figured quite importantly in his development. The traumatized and embittered Robert de Ropp gained some perspective and matured during this period of support and advanced education. Like many intelligent, humane people of his time, de Ropp was appalled by the staggering destruction and carnage that had occurred during World War I. However, he was also dismayed by the spread of fascistic ideologies in Europe in the 1930s. Given his values and desire to commit himself to a positive effort, he allied with many other British intellectuals of similar inclination in Richard Sheppard’s Peace Pledge Union — only to find hopes for effective peaceful negotiation with the Nazis dashed when Germany invaded Poland and then France. Career as biochemist The Vaughan Williamses had paid for Robert’s further education at the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, where he eventually specialized in biology. He earned a PhD degree in plant physiology at the Royal College. During this period, as well, he developed interests in politics, philosophy, and spirituality. In this earlier portion of his life, de Ropp was active in plant physiology and cancer research. In 1939 he was at the Research Institute of Plant Physiology at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. In the first quarter of 1939, at Paddington, he married Eileen M. Trinder, with whom he had lived for a number of years. He and Eileen had two children. During the Second World War, de Ropp worked as a bacteriologist and plant biologist. He met Kathleen Elizabeth (Betty) Knowlman during these years, when he was involved with research at Kew Gardens (England's botanical research and education institution), at which Betty worked as a gardener. Betty later joined him in the United States after he moved there, at which time they married. In the early 1940s, de Ropp wrote a number of research papers relating to plant physiology and tumours. By 1945 he was a Research Officer of the Agricultural Research Council at the Rothamsted Experimental Station. After emigrating to the U.S., de Ropp's