Canadian botanist Charles Budd Robinson worked at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and in Southeast Asia at the Philippine Bureau of Sciences. He was born the only son of a telegrapher and his wife in Pictou, Nova Scotia, and graduated from Dalhousie University in 1892, after which he taught for a number of years. Meanwhile he studied the botany of eastern Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and lower St. Lawrence, going on to gain his doctorate at Columbia University in 1906 and leaving teaching for a position at NYBG.

After a period as Assistant Curator of the NYBG herbarium, Robinson was recruited by the Philippine Bureau of Sciences. He thus spent 1908-1911 based in Manila, returning to New York in 1911-1912. Robinson then went back to the Philippines, where he was tasked with studying the flora of Ambon alongside Elmer Drew Merrill. While exploring the island in 1913, Robinson was murdered (by members of the so-called gypsy people, 'Binongkos'). Merrill subsequently dedicated his Interpretation of Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense to Robinson.

Sources:
Anon., 1913, "Malays Kill a Botanist", The New York Times, Dec. 24, 1913
N.L. Britton, 1914, Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, 15: 106
M.J. van Steenis Kruseman, "Cyclopedia of Collectors", Flora Malesiana, online edn:
www.nationaalherbarium.nl/FMCollectors/R/RobinsonCB.htm, accessed 28 January 2011
W. Trelease, 1918, "Herbarium amboinense", Botanical Gazette, 65(5): 490.