Career
The Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which he founded in Cape Town in 1939, was named in his honour. He stayed on at Cambridge from 1911-1913 as a Demonstrator in Botany, and joined a field expedition to New Caledonia in 1914, collecting extensively and discovering some new genera and species. While at Cambridge, his main publications were in the area of anatomy and morphology of Gymnosperms, Pteridophytes and Angiosperm seedlings.
He enlisted for war service from 1915-1918 and arrived in South Africa in March 1919 to become Director of the National Botanic Gardens at Kirstenbosch.
At the same time he took up the chair of Harold Pearson Professor of Botany at the University of Cape Town - Harold Pearson was the first Director of Kirstenbosch. Robert Compton held these posts for the next 34 years.
In South Africa his interests were confined to the taxonomy of South African flora. Most of his publications in this field were in the Journal of South African Botany, a journal which he started in 1935 and edited until his retirement.
On retirement in 1953 he chose to settle in Swaziland and was commissioned by the Swazi Government to undertake a botanical survey of the country.
The results first appeared as An Annotated Checklist of the Flora of Swaziland in Journal of South African Botany Supplement 11 (1976) Honours and awards.
