Doctor Dopamine

What does it mean to spend a lifetime hunting a disease — only to find it hunting you?

Dr. Harry Robertson dedicated decades to unravelling the mysteries of dopamine, transforming our understanding of Parkinson’s disease from the inside of a lab at Dalhousie University. His pioneering discovery that the loss of smell can serve as an early warning sign of Parkinson’s helped shift an entire field toward earlier diagnosis and intervention — giving patients more time, more treatment, and more life. Then came his own diagnosis.

Journalist Jon Tattrie follows Robertson through the arc of a remarkable scientific career and an intensely human story. Through intimate visits and frank conversation, Tattrie captures a man of boundless passion — someone who compares working with mice to a Mozart symphony — now navigating the very motor and non-motor symptoms he spent his career studying. The result is a portrait that is honest, respectful, and quietly extraordinary: a scientist who became a subject, a researcher who became a patient, and a man who, through it all, never stopped teaching.