Thomas Hewitson Roberts was born March 19, 1906, at Albany in Western Australia. He received his M.A. degree at the University of Western Australia in 1933. He received his B.A. degree in 1937 and M.A. in 1940 at Merton College in Oxford. While studying at Oxford, Roberts became acquainted with Paul Engle, a poet who becamelecturer at the State University of Iowa in 1937 and director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, 1941-1967.

Roberts joined the faculty of the S.U.I. College of Education in September 1940 as assistant professor. He became associate professor in 1948 and full professor in 1953. His areas of teaching were adult education and later, the expansion of high school education in Western Australia. He was interested in the German educational system during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At S.U.I. he was a member of a group which established the Iowa Center for Continuation Study.

According to an article in the Daily Iowan of June 14, 1949, Roberts served as director of the Marengo Experiment, which held educational lectures in Marengo during fall 1948, followed by SUI in summer 1949, and finally at Davenport in fall 1949. These programs served as models for training teachers in presenting chemistry and nuclear physics lectures to students of atomic energy.

During the winter of 1942 Roberts was granted a military leave to serve as Director of Education with the British Information Services in New York. In spring 1943 he enlisted as a private in the United States Army, and then transferred to the Australian forces. In spring 1947 he returned to S.U.I. with his wife, Molly (Wreford) Roberts. They were married in October 1946 and had four sons. Roberts moved his family to Australia in 1957. Thomas H. Roberts died in Australia on September 8, 1979.