Educated at
George Heriot's School in Edinburgh, Scotland (Captain and Dux 1965), he spent a decade as an undergraduate student (
Wrangler 1968), graduate student (PhD 1973), and research fellow (1972–1976) at
Trinity College, Cambridge and
Institute of Theoretical Astronomy. Following his appointment to a Lectureship (1975) at the then Department of Mathematics in Edinburgh, his entire professional career has been based there, with prolonged research visits to Princeton, Cambridge, Kyoto, and Warsaw. He was appointed Professor of Mathematical Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh in 1994, has held visiting professorships at
Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg and
Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto, and an honorary professorship at
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Among other indicators of esteem, he has served as the President of Commission 37 of the
International Astronomical Union, on the Council of the
Royal Astronomical Society of London (Triennium 1982–1985), as an Editor of long standing of its main research journal,
Monthly Notices, as well as an Advisory Editor of the
Journal for the History of Astronomy. == Honours ==