John Robinson is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney's Faculty of Science. He earned a B.Sc. in 1961 and a B.Sc. with First Class Honours in Mathematics in 1963 from the University of Queensland, and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics in 1969 from the University of Sydney, where his thesis was titled "Mixtures of Distributions." His professional career commenced as a Biometrician with the Queensland Department of Primary Industry from 1961 to 1964. He then joined the University of Sydney, progressing through roles including Lecturer in the Biometry Section of the Department of Agriculture (1964-1966), Lecturer (1966-1971), Senior Lecturer (1972-1982), Associate Professor (1983-1991), and Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics since 1991. Robinson held visiting associate professor positions at the University of Connecticut (1969-1970), University of Waterloo (1975-1976), University of California, Berkeley (1979-1980), and University of Rochester (1986). He served as Head of the Department of Mathematical Statistics on several occasions (January-June 1979; September 1983-December 1985; January 1988-December 1989) and as Head of the School of Mathematics and Statistics from January 2001 to December 2002.

Robinson's research interests encompass asymptotic methods in statistics, resampling methods, multivariate analysis, and modelling and inference in biology. He has supervised ten doctoral theses and six master's theses. Among his honors are election as a Member of the International Statistical Institute in 1984, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1990, and the Pitman Medal awarded by the Statistical Society of Australia in 2008. Notable publications include "Saddlepoint approximations and tests based on multivariate M-estimates" in The Annals of Statistics (2003), "Cramér-Type Large Deviations for Samples from a Finite Population" also in The Annals of Statistics (2007), "Approximations to distributions of sample quantiles" in Handbook of Statistics 16 (1998), and "Phylogenetic model evaluation" in Methods in Molecular Biology (2008). His work has appeared in leading journals such as Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Journal of Multivariate Analysis, and Systematic Biology, contributing significantly to advancements in statistical theory and applications.

Professional Email: john.robinson@sydney.edu.au