John Robertson was brought up in China where his parents were Christian missionaries. (In 1980 he claimed to know no Chinese "We were not allowed to talk to the servants".) He attended the University of Edinburgh and graduated in chemistry in 1946. He then began work on a Ph.D. under the supervision of C.A Beevers. These were the first days of the determination of absolute configuration, with much friendly rivalry between Arnold Beevers and J.M. Bijvoet in Utrecht, both of whom worked on salts of strychnine. John studied the chloride, bromide and iodide salts, and his beautifully developed and labelled normal-beam Weissenberg photographs are still preserved in Edinburgh. He solved the structure of the bromide, in P2₁2₁2₁, on the basis of the three projections and then refined in three dimensions to determine the chirality. Happily, the Bijvoet group determined the same hand for the selenate salt! Meanwhile, the samples also survived, and the structure of the chloride, which gives pseudo-orthorhombic monoclinic crystals with Z' = 2, was solved by one of us (ROG) in 1980, using John's crystals. Sadly, COSHH regulations eventually resulted in their disposal!

From 1951-54, John had a happy post-doctoral period in Dorothy Hodgkin's group working on, the SeCN and the hexacarboxylic acid derivatives of vitamin B₁₂. He has described this period in " Memories of Dorothy Hodgkin,Structural Studies of Molecules of Biological Interest",Ed. G.Dodson, J.P .Glusker and D.Sayre (1961)72-78.

In 1954 he joined E.G.Cox's group in the University of Leeds. Here, used his great experimental skill to build an instrument to allow X-ray photographs to be taken of a crystal at the temperature of liquid hydrogen. He used it to study ammonium oxalate monohydrate. MRT remembers working on it with him all day and seeing non-matching earrings when I got home. I teased him with failure of observation. Quick as a flash he said "I did notice, but as it was you, I thought it must be the dernier cri !" Later he undertook the neutron study of this elegant compound. Various thoughtful publications followed, on oxalates, thiophenic acids, monosaccharides and coordination compounds of iron and nickel. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer. Apart from a period (1965-8) on secondment as the founding Professor of Chemistry in the University College of Dar-es-Salaam, he remained in Leeds for the rest of his life. This period in Tanzania was a watershed. A visitor remarked on the great strain imposed on John and his family. After his return, original experimental work seems to have ceased. Nonetheless, various Heads of Department did not allow him to take early retirement because, being totally unselfish, he was much too useful. For example, he ran the Colvin Room, a common room and library for chemistry students of Leeds University. He served the IUCr as an excellent Book Review Editor for its journals from 1975 to 1987. He then became Chairman of the IUCr-OUP Book Series Committee from its inception in 1987 until 1996, well after his fiscal retirement.

His experience as a sandy-haired person in the sun showed at the 1969 IUCR meeting when the conference excursion took the form of 5 hours on an Atlantic beach on Long Island. As we were warned in the coaches on the way, this is the latitude of Madrid. Walking along the shore was an unmistakable figure in hat, mackintosh, trousers and shoes. His last years were saddened by the long illness of his very dear wife Inge, which prevented him travelling, and after her death by his own incapacity.

Many people will remember him as a widely-read and civilised person with a very lively sense of humour, shared with his Ph.D. supervisor Arnold Beevers, with whom he remained on good terms throughout his life. He gave a memorably uproarious lecture at Arnold's 70^th Birthday celebration in 1978, the photograph above was taken ten years later at the 80^th birthday party.

He was always very fond of children. ROG's daughter remembers him as "the man at crystallography meetings who drew cats on my knees." His sincere but undogmatic Christian belief was the guiding spirit of his life; a typical example was that his Christmas cards always consisted of photographs of his family with a montage of 'Peace and Joy'. We conclude with an extract from the passage he wrote to be used at his funeral:

"All life is finite. This is the way God designed the natural order. Successive generations are cradled in the arms of their forebears. We ourselves would not be here if death, as well as life, were not normal throughout the whole of nature. To be sure, human life is special. We can feel God's love for us and can respond and so live in a dimension infinitely rich and profoundly significant."

We are grateful to Prof. D.W.J.Cruickshank for helpful information.

Jackie Truter (MRT) and Bob Gould (ROG)