Christie Brown was born on 1 July 1898 and was educated at the Royal Kepier Grammar School and Durham University, where he gained numerous prizes and scholarships. While an undergraduate he served for a few years of the first world war in a destroyer based on Scapa Flow, but returned to the University after the war and graduated in 1920. He specialised early in gynaecology and became obstetric tutor at Leeds University and later at the London Hospital. After a time he was appointed to the staff of the Samaritan Hospital for Women, the Metropolitan Hospital, the City of London Maternity Hospital and many others in and around London. He became in due course an examiner to the Central Midwives Board and to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, of which he had been a founder member. Christie Brown's outstanding ability as an obstetrician was widely recognised, especially by his married colleagues, and he made a special study of the treatment of infertility in women; he was also the inventor of an unspillable hour-glass chloroform-inhaler for use by the patient when in labour. Christie Brown was an excellent lecturer and an able after-dinner speaker, much sought after at medical and other gatherings where eloquence and wit were in demand. He was a good organiser and took an active part in the work of the Samaritan Hospital. When there was talk of the Samaritan being completely merged in St Mary's Hospital, Christie Brown took up the defence of the Samaritan whose name was retained when the two hospitals were united. He contributed many papers on his specialty and his text book on midwifery was reprinted many times, running into its third edition by 1950. In addition to his other work Brown took an active interest in the problems of cancer and was one of the first to prescribe cytotoxic drugs to his patients. First in London and later at Loughton in Essex, he kept open house to his friends and colleagues; for outside interests he became a keen photographer and a first-class mechanic. For many years he was dogged by ill health (a nephrotic syndrome), which led to his early retirement in 1959. Robin Christie Brown's wife died in 1970; and their only son Jeremy Robin Warrington Christie Brown took up medicine; he himself died after a brief illness on 13 December 1971 at his home at Highcliffe-on-Sea.