Vale Robert Peter Robertson
27 March 1949 – 9 November 2025
MHS 1963 – 1966

Peter was born on 27 March 1949 when the family resided in Windsor (Prahran, Victoria). His parents were Stuart and Kathleen (Kay) Robertson. Stuart (R.S.D.R.) was a well-known MHS phys-ed teacher. The family, including siblings Craig (MHS 1958 – 1961), Lee and Sue moved to Malvern where Peter attended Park Street Primary School and Spring Road Central School before continuing high school at MHS.

Peter specialised in science and mathematics and won a Commonwealth Scholarship to go to Melbourne University, where he took BSc (Hons) 1970, and an MSc in Theoretical Physics in 1973. During these years he was active in radical politics and culture and was a founding member of a commune in Gippsland in 1971. A paper derived from his thesis was published in the Australian Journal of Physics in 1974 as Peter travelled across America, driving the famous Route 66.

He travelled on to Europe and landed a job at Elsevier Publishing in Copenhagen. It was here that he developed a career in science journalism and history, focused on physics, more particularly astronomy-related disciplines. His first book was published in 1979: The Early Years: the Niels Bohr Institute 1921 – 1930 (Academisk Forlag, Copenhagen). It was dedicated to his wife, Diane Stagoll, whom he had married during the Copenhagen years.

Back in Australia in 1979, Peter secured a job at CSIRO as editor of the Australian Journal of Physics, which he held until the journal was discontinued in 2001. He also began a long-standing honorary position with Professor Rod Home in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Melbourne University. His research led to his second book, published in 1992 by Cambridge University Press: Beyond Southern Skies: Radio Astronomy and the Parkes Telescope. This history of Australia’s world famous radio telescope, featuring its role in the 1969 moon landing, provided inspiration and background material for the film The Dish.

In the meantime Peter was also father to two daughters, Katie and Laura, and had established a fine home on the banks of Darebin Creek in Ivanhoe. When the AJP editorship was brought to an end, he secured a job at RMIT University where he worked as a research coordinator until his retirement in 2009.

He was then able to focus more on his own research interests and join with the astrophysics group at Melbourne University. He ultimately published a highly regarded biography of John Bolton, the founding director of the Parkes telescope, played by Sam Neill in the film. Radio Astronomer: John Bolton and a new window on the universe was published by NewSouth Publishing (UNSW) in 2017. Associated with this project, he lectured at the National Library of Australia, where he had a fellowship, was interviewed by Robin Williams for the ABC Science Show, and presented an episode of the ABC Ockham’s Razor program (2017).

The Bolton book also supported Peter gaining a PhD at Southern Cross University. His supervisor was an American physicist, Wayne Orchiston, with whom Peter collaborated as contributing co-editor on two other books on the history of astronomy in Australia, published during 2021-2023.

In between parenting and then grandparenting four granddaughters – Ellie, Amber, Amelie and Justine – Peter also published over 20 papers during the 1980s to the 2020s in various refereed journals and proceedings. His most recent project was also co-authored with Orchiston, a biographical paper on the Melbourne theoretical physicist William Sutherland, who had worked on ideas similar to Einstein’s.

Peter died after a short illness, a brain tumour, surrounded by his family on Sunday 9 November, 2025. Both chapels at his funeral venue were filled to standing room only.

Craig Robertson