	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.