Julian Perry Robinson was the world’s leading historian of chemical and biological weapons, and made an immense contribution over more than fifty years to preventing their use. He was trained as a chemist and lawyer, and worked first at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and then at the University of Sussex. His 1971 work – The Prevention of CBW – was a landmark in understanding and eventually ending the use of these weapons. Together with The Arms Trade with Third World, published by SIPRI in the same year, and written by Mary Kaldor, who became his wife, The Prevention of CBW marked the beginning of the modern scholarly study of arms and disarmament. He worked over many years with the World Health Organisation and the International Committee of the Red Cross. His archive of documents related to the history of chemical and biological weapons, at the University of Sussex, is a resource of worldwide importance. Julian Perry Robinson played a major role in inspiring the programme with which the Centre for History and Economics began in 1991, the Common Security Forum. He devoted his life to the scientific and historical understanding of the next pandemic.
Emma Rothschild and Gareth Stedman Jones