Dr. William H. Robinson
Born in 1943, Dr. William H. Robinson, was the oldest of four boys growing up in North Philadelphia, Pa., and insects were the last thing on his mind during childhood. He jokingly refers to himself as a “street urchin” until fifth grade, when the family moved to New Jersey, and he found friends who showed him how to play baseball and soccer.
“They said let’s teach him how to punt and run fast,” he teases. “In baseball, they sent me to right field because, well, no one ever hits to right field.”
In high school, Dr. Robinson gravitated toward wrestling — a team sport and yet he could work on his individual progress. “We all were starting on a level playing field,” he explains. From high school to college, his wrestling weight was 137 pounds. He was third on the mat and lettered in wrestling as a college freshman.
That was at Maryville College in Tennessee, which served about 1,200 students at the time. He and his freshman roommate knew they had to pick a major at the end of their first semester. They also knew they couldn’t just major in “girls.” They made a pact to major in whatever subject they earned an A in first.
“Well, right away, Steve gets an A in math,” Dr. Robinson goodheartedly grumbles. “It took me forever to get an A in anything, but it turned out to be biology.”
Dr. Robinson wasn’t too excited about a biology degree until the following semester, when his professor was actually an entomologist with a doctoral degree. It sealed his fate.
A year later, however, he found he was trading in the small college life in Tennessee for the much bigger campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The reason was a college girlfriend. The education lasted much longer than the relationship. As Dr. Robinson notes pragmatically, “Sometimes you get your heart broken, and sometimes it changes your direction.”
It led him back to his high school sweetheart, Carol, to whom he has been married since 1965. They have a son and two daughters, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
The professor as a preschooler, left, and as a doctoral student at Iowa State University. PHOTO COURTESY OF DR. WILLIAM ROBINSON
A lifetime of learning
While still an undergrad and home in New Jersey for the summer, Dr. Robinson tracked down the then-headquarters of the National Pest Management Association — then known as the National Pest Control Association, or NPCA — in Elizabeth, N.J., and inquired about a summer job.
“They showed me right into the office of Dr. Ralph Heal,” he recalls of the then-executive director and a fellow PMP Hall of Famer (Class of 2003). “I explained what I was trying to do, and right then and there, Ralph picked up the phone, made a call, wrote an address on a piece of paper, and I was on my way.”
The address was Bowco Laboratories in Woodridge, N.J., where Fred Bowers hired him as a termite technician.
That fall, Dr. Robinson returned to Kent to finish both a bachelor’s and master’s degree, earning the latter in 1966. From there, he headed to Iowa State in Ames, Iowa, to earn his doctorate. By 1970, he was teaching at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).
Dr. Robinson spent the next three decades at Virginia Tech, conducting extensive research on household and structural pests with students, and publishing nearly 100 research papers.
After serving for many years as the director of the Urban Entomology Research Center at Virginia Tech, he expanded the global reach of urban entomology as a visiting professor and director of the Urban Entomology Research Center at Zhejiang University in China.
During this period, Dr. Robinson also developed five technician training manuals, including two in Chinese. He also authored two seminal textbooks: Urban Entomology: Insect and Mite Pests in the Human Environment and Urban Insects and Arachnids: A Handbook of Urban Entomology.
Following his academic career, Dr. Robinson spent 20 years as technical director at B&G Equipment Co., focusing on application technology for pest control. He currently serves as technical products director for sprayer manufacturer The Fountainhead Group, joking that he still has so much research he wants to explore that he’ll be the “last man standing” in the lab, despite his 82 years. At press time, Dr. Robinson was awaiting approval on a sprayer innovation for use in Singapore.
This will be his second patent, as some years before, he worked with researchers in Virginia Tech’s Pallet Testing Laboratory at the Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. Together, they patented a way to control insects in pallets — although Dr. Robinson downplays his role, saying, “I supplied the bugs; they supplied the brains.”
Dr. William H. Robinson presents a session at a recent ICUP event. PHOTO COURTESY OF DR. WILLIAM ROBINSON
Thankful for technicians
The professional accomplishment he is most proud of, though, is founding the International Conference on Urban Pests (ICUP) in 1990, a tri-annual event that maintains an online presence.
“We have become the ‘the place to be’ for urban pest management professionals every three years,” Dr. Robinson says, noting the next conference takes place
in Lund, Sweden, in June 2025. “It’s a diverse group from all over the world and, at each conference, I’m amazed at the number of new faces along with the familiar friends.”
ICUP events welcome everyone from academia to industry to government agents and college students. But for the day-to-day work of urban pest control, Dr. Robinson says he believes pest control technicians are the unsung heroes.
“When you walk out of the restaurant after treatment, no one applauds. You’re just off to the next account,” he explains, reflecting on his own time as a technician. “Your spouse doesn’t want to hear how dirty the restaurant was; your neighbor doesn’t want to know what you caught in the trap.
“All technicians are cut from the same cloth,” he adds. “They are problem solvers. They are smarter than they think they are, and I like just being around them and trying to answer their questions. Even better is when they have questions I don’t know the answers to, and we figure it out together.”
<p>The post <em>PMP</em> Hall of Fame profile: Dr. William H. Robinson first appeared on Pest Management Professional.</p>
from Pest Management Professional https://www.mypmp.net/2024/10/01/pmp-hall-of-fame-profile-dr-william-h-robinson/
Sacramento CA
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