Robert Dawson Rudolf was born on June 29, 1865, in Pictou, Nova Scotia, son of William Norman Rudolf (1835-1886) and Catherine Matthews Dawson (1836-1911), aunt to Sir William Dawson.

He was a physician. In 1870, his family moved first to Scotland and then to Birkenhead, England, where he attended the Birkenhead School. As a young man, he returned to Canada for a couple of years to take up farming but left this career to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh (M.D., C.M., 1889). He continued his postgraduate studies in London, Paris, and Berlin. Rudolf practiced medicine at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and Hospital for Sick Children, spent five years with the British Army in India, then settled in Toronto. He worked for many years at Toronto General Hospital and the Sick Children's Hospital and was a professor of therapeutics at the University of Toronto. He served with the Canadian Army Medical Corps with the rank of colonel in the First World War and was consulting physician for the Canadian overseas forces (1914-1919). He was a member of the advisory board of the Patent and Proprietary Medicine Act of Canada in 1912 and held the office of president of the Royal Medical Society, Edinburgh. In 1921, he wrote The Medical Treatment of Disease. He travelled widely and occupied his leisure with riding, fishing, and golf.

In 1894, he married Rosa Marguerite Danson (1868–1934). He died on November 2, 1941, in Toronto, Ontario.

Catherine “Cassie” Matthews Dawson was born in 1836 in Pictou, Nova Scotia, the daughter of Robert Dawson (1791-1864), uncle of Sir William Dawson, and Barbara Todd (1799-1874).

She attended Pictou Academy (1845-1851), where she excelled in all her studies, especially in French. In 1859, she married William Norman Rudolf (1835-1886), a merchant. In 1870, they moved to Scotland. She died on August 5, 1911, in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England.