He was born in East Sleekburn in Northumberland on 17 August 1924, the son of Robert soulsby Tebble and his wife, Jane Ann Graham.
In late 1943 he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and served as a pilot in Burma and India.
Burt obtained a summer position for Tebble at the Shell Oil Company in The Hague in the Netherlands.
In 1958 he was given the John Murray Travelling Scholarship and went to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography based at La Jolla in California.
In 1954 he married fellow zoologist Mary Olivia Archer, who he had met through his work in the Natural History Museum.