A leader in paediatric neonatology, an editor at the BMJ, and an internationally acknowledged expert on the life and works of the poet and philosopher James Beattie

Zealous yet modest; innocent, though free; Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms; Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.

James Beattie 1735-1803,

The Minstrel book 1 stanza 11

Roger Robinson's Oxford DPhil thesis was in animal physiology, notably the dynamics of production and movement of carbon dioxide between body compartments. His Aberdeen PhD, nearly four decades later, was on a poet and moral philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, James Beattie, four volumes of whose correspondence he published in 2001. He became an internationally acknowledged expert on Beattie's life and works and was made honorary fellow in English at Aberdeen.

In between he was a neonatologist in the pioneering unit at Hammersmith Hospital headed by Sir Peter Tizard, a professor of paediatrics at Guy's Hospital Medical School, a leader in paediatric neurology, and an editor at the BMJ.

At Guy's he combined hands on general paediatric care with a one in three on-call rota for paediatric neurology. He was academic …