Robin A. Wooding (1926-2007) made many outstanding and original contributions to the field of convection in porous media throughout his research career. He was an applied mathematician who also worked on a wide variety of other important hydrological, meteorological, earth science and physical science problems. Important contributions included (i) the discovery of the occurrence of fingers in the context of mono-diffusive convection in a porous medium and an early body of associated papers on convection in porous media, (ii) the development of a novel hydraulic model for the catchment-stream problem and (iii) the mathematical solution to the problem of steady infiltration from a shallow circular pond that formed the basis for the disc permeameter method. This note documents biographical matters and assesses the importance of his scientific work.