Robert Cecil Olby (4 October 1933 – 31 December 2020) was a British research professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Formerly Reader at the University of Leeds, UK, Robert Olby was a historian of 19th and 20th century biology, his specialist fields being genetics and molecular biology. With the assistance of Martin Packer, Olby completed an authorized biography of the late Francis Crick. It is entitled Francis Crick: Hunter of Life's Secrets, after an article in The New York Times on February 2, 1962. Olby was born in Beckenham on October 4, 1933, and died in Willow Spring, North Carolina on 31 December 2020, at the age of 87.[1]