Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (4 December 1911 – 3 March 1983) was a professor of English literature, lecturer in naval architecture, novelist, historian, poet and biographer. Born at Saltash, Cornwall, Payne was the son of an English naval architect and a French mother.
Payne worked as a shipbuilder and then for a time with the Inland Revenue. In 1937, Payne met Adolf Hitler in Munich through Rudolf Hess, an incident which Payne describes in his book Eyewitness. In 1941 he became an armament officer and chief camouflage officer for British Army Intelligence at Singapore. Driven out of Singapore by Japanese forces, he ended up first in Chungking and then in Kunming, in both of which places he kept extensive diaries which were published in 1945. In Kunming he was a close friend of the influential intellectual Wen Yiduo who was assassinated by Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang. Between 1943 and 1946 Payne taught naval architecture at Lianda University in China.
In 1946, Payne met and interviewed Mao Zedong in Yenan. During the interview Mao correctly predicted that it would only take the Communist forces a year and a half to conquer China once the armistice with Chiang Kai-shek and his followers was broken. Between 1949 and 1954 Payne was a professor of English literature at the University of Montevallo in the United States.
Robert Payne may refer to:
Sir Robert Payne (29 September 1573 - 18 June 1631) was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1614 and 1629.
Payne was the son of Robert Payne of Midloe, Huntingtonshire and his wife Maria Watertown, daughter of Sir Robert Watertown of Waterton, Yorkshire. In 1603 he inherited the estate of Midloe on the death of his father. He was knighted at Greenwich on 22 May 1605. In 1607 he was High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. He was a subscriber of the Virginia Company of London in 1609. In 1614, Payne was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdonshire. He was re-elected MP for Huntingdonshire in 1621. In 1626 he was elected MP for Huntingdonshire again. He was re-elected in 1628 and sat until 1629 when King Charles decided to rule without parliament for eleven years.
Payne died at the age of aged 58.
Payne married Elizabeth Rotheram, the daughter of George Rotheram of Somery, Bedfordshire and had 5 sons and 6 daughters.
Robert Berkeley Payne is an ornithologist, professor and curator at the Museum of Zoology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan.
Payne had completed his B.S. at the University of Michigan in 1960, and Ph.D. at the University of California (Berkeley) in 1965. He was awarded an NSF postdoctoral fellowship by the University of Cape Town. He was awarded the 2010 Margaret Morse Nice Medal by the Wilson Ornithological Society.
Payne is an expert in behavioral ecology and evolution, bird song and systematics. He has done fieldwork in Africa for 2 years, Western Australia for three years, and in Michigan for 20 years.
Some notable publications: