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CORVALLIS, Ore. - The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society has conferred its Distinguished Achievement Award on David Robinson, the director of the Center for the Humanities, the Oregon Professor of English and a distinguished professor of American literature at Oregon State University.

A leading Emerson scholar for the past quarter century, Robinson has written two books and numerous articles on Emerson, including "Emerson and the Conduct of Life" (Cambridge University Press, 1993) and "Apostle of Culture: Emerson as Preacher and Lecturer" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). Historians consider both books to be classics.

Robinson has also published books about and editions of other major figures of the Transcendentalist movement of early 19th-century America.

Robinson recently turned his attention to Henry Thoreau, writing "Natural Life: Thoreau's Worldly Transcendentalism" (Cornell University Press, 2004), hailed by eminent Thoreau scholar Bradley P. Dean as one of the best books ever written about Thoreau.

The Emerson Society presented Robinson with a certificate and the Emerson Society Medal following his major address "Natural History and Natural Life: Thoreau's Intellectual and Emotional Crisis" at July's Thoreau Society Annual Gathering in Concord, Mass.

Robinson did his undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin and received a M.T.S from Harvard Divinity School and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.