Robert S de Ropp - Career As Biochemist

Career As Biochemist

The Vaughan Williamses paid for Robert’s further education at the Royal College of Science, in South Kensington. Here he eventually specialized in biology. He earned a PhD 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. He married Eileen M Trinder, with whom he had lived for a number of years, at Paddington in the first quarter of 1939. He and Eileen had two children. During the World War II years, de Ropp worked as a bacteriologist and plant biologist. He met Kathleen Elizabeth (Betty) Knowlman when (also during the War) he worked as a researcher and she worked as a gardener, both at Kew Gardens; 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 immigrating to the U.S., his professional life included a stay at the Rockefeller Institute as a visiting investigator. At various times, his research was centered on cancer, mental illness, or drugs that affect behavior. During a 10-year period when de Ropp worked for the Lederle Laboratories (near Pearl River, New York), he wrote a book in the field of psychoactive substances (many of which are plant-derived) for the general reader: Drugs and the Mind.