Robert Marshall was a consultant surgeon at Prince Henry’s Hospital, Melbourne. He was born on 3 May 1926 in Nihill, Victoria, Australia, the son of Charles Jeremiah Marshall and Catherine May Marshall née Bofill. His four siblings all had careers in medicine and allied professions: Betty became a general practitioner, Gwen a physiotherapist, and Vernon and Donald both became surgeons. Marshall studied medicine at the University of Melbourne and qualified in 1948. From 1951 to 1973 he lectured in anatomy at the University of Melbourne and subsequently worked at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He then went to the UK for further training, to Hammersmith Hospital. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1955. He returned to Australia, where he assisted Ernest Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. From 1963 to 1991 he was a consultant surgeon at Prince Henry’s Hospital. He continued his private practice until the last year of his life. He was on the Victorian branch council of the Australian Medical Association, the Victorian regional committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and served as chairman of the committee of chairmen of the Senior Medical Staff Associations. He cowrote *Principles of pathology in surgery* (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific, 1980) and, drawing on his comprehensive knowledge of anatomy, *Living anatomy: structure as the mirror of function* (Carlton South, Victoria, Melbourne University Press, 2001). This led to him being awarded a doctor of medicine from the University of Melbourne in 2006. In 2001, to honour the contributions to surgery of Robert and his brothers Vernon and Donald, Monash University set up the Marshall Prize in Surgical Training. Outside medicine, he found time for skiing and trekking in the mountains, his two great passions. In 2009 he published *K2: lies and treachery* (Ross-on-Wye, Carreg Ltd), an account of the 1954 ascent of K2 by the Italian mountaineer Walter Bonatti. Two years earlier he had given a presentation on Bonatti to the Italian Alpine Club in fluent Italian. Marshall died on 29 January 2011 at the age of 84. He was survived by his wife Phyllis (née Sinclair), whom he married in 1951, and five children Diane, David, Robert, Andrew and Lisa.