Born in Glasgow in 1879 son of Blair Robertson, he was educated at St Dunstan's College and Guy's Hospital. After qualifying he spent a year in South Africa, but in 1905 he went to New Zealand where he spent the rest of his life. For five years medical superintendent of Waihi Hospital, in 1912 he was appointed to the honorary staff of the Auckland Hospital where he remained until his retirement in 1937. He also held an appointment at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Auckland as surgeon and later chief of staff. He served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1915-16. He was the first New Zealander to become an honorary fellow of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and was president of the New Zealand Branch of the BMA. He married first in 1906 Constance Maxwell-Hibberd, by whom he had three sons and a daughter and who died in 1951, and secondly in 1957 a wife who survived him with the four children of his former marriage. He died at Auckland on 7 July 1963 aged 84.