Robert received his Physics degree from the University of Liverpool in 1959 and a Ph.D. in Dynamics of Ice Shelves from the University of Cambridge in 1973. He worked as a glaciologist and meteorologist at the British Antarctic Survey from 1959-1963 and 1965-1973. In the 70s, he worked as Research Associate at the University of Nebraska and as Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Maine, in Orono. He has been extensively involved in Research Projects in Antartica and Greenland. His Antarctic work has focused on ice shelves, modelling interaction between ice shelves and the glaciers that feed them. Along with Terry Hughes, Robert made early measurements of ice velocity in Greenland during the 1970s. After many years of polar field work, he accepted an offer made by Jay Zwally and worked with NASA on remote sensing ice research applications, particularly on radar altimetry data and on early plans for laser altimetry. He managed NASA's Polar Research Program for several years giving priority to studying the role of sea ice in the climate system and to mass balance of ice sheets under changing climate conditions. He remained a NASA Science Team member conducting laser-altimetry missions aboard ICESat and also participated in field work in Greenland, as part of the Program for Arctic Regional Climate Assessment (PARCA), to measure and understand ice-sheet mass balance. He is currently a research scientist and member of the science team for NASA's Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS), at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility and is a Visiting Professor at Centro de Estudios Científicos since 2003.