Dr Robert Harrison (1944 2007) was a member of the Department of History and Welsh History at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, for more than thirty years. His numerous publications on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American politics, particularly on Congress and the District of Columbia, made a very significant contribution to the field. They include State and Society in Twentieth-Century America (1997) and Congress, Progressive Reform, and the New American State (Cambridge University Press, 2004). An active participant in the research community of American history, Dr Harrison was a long-standing member of BAAS and was closely involved in the British American Nineteenth Century Historians' organization (BrANCH), organizing two major conferences on American history in 2000 and 2004.