Professor Roger Robinson

Paediatrician and editor of James Beattie

Roger James Robinson, paediatrician, English scholar and editor: born Parkstone, Dorset 17 May 1932; Lecturer, Christ Church, Oxford 1953-56; staff, Department of Child Health, Hammersmith Hospital 1962-66, Senior Paediatric Registrar 1964-66, Honorary Consultant, 1967-71; Senior Lecturer, Institute of Child Health, London University 1967-71; Consultant Paediatrician, Guy's Hospital 1971-90; Professor of Paediatrics, Guy's Hospital Medical School (later United Medical and Dental School of Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals) 1975-90 (Emeritus); Honorary Fellow, Department of English, Aberdeen University 1996-2000; married 1962 Jane Packham (two sons, one daughter); died London 12 October 2003.

Roger Robinson was a tall, slightly stooping and, at first meeting, quiet and bookish man, and few would have realised his eminence and innovation in the world of paediatrics. He was a leading figure in transforming the chances of survival for premature babies and in our understanding of developmental disorders in children.

In the 1960s he was one of the first to describe ways of assessing a premature baby's gestational age. In 1972, he co-authored Medical Care of Newborn Babies, which remained the "bible" of British neonatology for nearly a decade. And his 1991 review article on the causes of speech and language disorders in children, which described the range of possible factors at work in an individual child, was a landmark and is still extensively cited.

Despite achieving such influence through his writing, and at a time when academic merit was measured by the length of a person's list of publications, Robinson did not publish prolifically, focusing most of his efforts on his patients and students. He joined medicine late, after studying and teaching physiology at Oxford University, and went on to excel at one of the most emotionally demanding and intellectually challenging specialities in medicine.

In the early 1960s, he joined the pioneering special care baby unit at the Hammersmith Hospital and went on to become Professor of Paediatrics at Guy's Hospital, from 1975 to 1990. His gentle kindness combined with his intellectual rigour earned him the admiration of his peers. Other doctors joined Guy's specifically to work with him. Robinson placed especial emphasis on the detail of caring for premature babies and children with learning disabilities, combining clinical rigour with great personal warmth. After consultations he would personally phone general practitioners, teachers, social workers or parents to explain his findings and what was planned.

Throughout his career, teaching and supporting students was an abiding passion. As a junior don at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1953, he showed his exceptional ability as a teacher. Medical students, who are often taught and treated as an afterthought by doctors, looked forward to his teaching sessions. He was especially good at analysing the scientific work of others and showing students how to critically appraise research - sorting out the valid from the speculative. His journal clubs attracted young doctors to this new discipline of critical appraisal - now called evidence-based medicine.

The same mix of carefulness and humanity was seen in his work as a medical editor. Between 1969 and 1982 Robinson was the editor of one of the world's leading paediatric journals, Archives of Diseases in Childhood. And in 1991, increasingly disillusioned with changes in the NHS such as the introduction of contracts and a growing emphasis on management, Robinson joined the BMJ (the British Medical Journal). He worked there until his death.

Some of the BMJ staff were wary of a retired professor joining their ranks but Robinson delighted in working with young people and his sense of humour and infectious laugh quickly dispelled any concerns. He appeared reserved, but was in fact robust and unshockable. He was a role model for some of the men at the BMJ, combining clear thinking with compassion and fairness. Few were aware of the strong faith that helped him so much in preparing for death. He quietly said goodbye to friends and colleagues, amazing many with his calmness and thoughtfulness for how they would feel after his death.

Robinson was also a sportsman. His childhood near Poole in Dorset introduced him to sailing, and as an undergraduate at Oxford he rowed in the Balliol College First VIII which took Head of the River. Later, on his retirement from medicine, he canoed the length of the Thames. Robinson's love of the Lakes was matched by his love of poetry and of Wordsworth in particular. After he retired, winter schools with the Wordsworth Trust led him to the work of James Beattie, the once famous Enlightenment poet and philosopher whose poem The Minstrel was a major influence on Wordsworth's The Prelude.

Determined to rescue Beattie from obscurity, Robinson in his early sixties embarked on a PhD at Aberdeen University to research Beattie's life; between 1996 and 2000 he was an Honorary Fellow of the Department of English at the university. His careful detective work uncovered about 50 unpublished poems, which were included in a multi-volume facsimile edition of Beattie's collected works for which Robinson wrote introductions.

He went on to edit Beattie's letters, being as careful to preserve Beattie's idiosyncratic spelling as he had been in correcting inaccuracies in medical articles. The Correspondence of James Beattie will be published in four volumes next year.

Fiona Godlee