Robertson was primarily known for the development of the synthetic lung surfactant known as Corusurf that brought relief to very small babies suffering from infant respiratory distress syndrome (RDS).

[1][2][3] From 1974 to 2000 he was the director of the division for experimental perinatal pathology in the department of women and child Health at the Karolinska Institute.

[1] Having decided to become a physician, Robertson attended the Karolinska Institute, a medical university and graduated Master of Science in Medicine (Swedish: Läkarexamen) in 1960.

[1] In 1959, Mary Avery and Jere Mede conducted a trial at the department of physiology at Harvard University in Boston, that showed that respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) was due to surfactant deficiency.

[8] The second study by Jacqueline Chu and her colleagues John Clements, Marshall Klaus and Bill Tooley in Singapore,[9] implied that the underlying cause of RDS was low blood flow instead instead of a deficiency of surfactant.

They described that when natural surfactant was installed directly into the trachea of premature rabbits, normal lung expansion was achieved, and the animals survived.

[5] Two years later in 1998, Robertson along with Tore Curstedt was awarded the Hilda and Alfred Eriksson Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.