Robert Fortuine was born in 1934 in Cambridge New York, grew up in Ogunquit Maine, and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire in 1952. His father, a retired surgeon died when Fortuine was ten years old, and his mother worked as a visiting nurse and later Head of the Infirmary at Colby College, Waterville Maine. Fortuine attended Cornell University, majoring in German literature with a minor in Classical Greek.

While studying at McGill University, Fortuine was President of the Osler Society, Editor of the McGill Medical Journal, and president of his fourth year class. Following graduation from McGill In 1960, he married Sheila Calder, a Montrealer and nurse at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and took a rotating internship at the Montreal General Hospital.

Fortuine returned to the United States in order to fulfill his draft requirement, and received a commission in the U.S. Public Health Service (in lieu of army service). After two years in North Dakota, he was granted his requested transfer to Alaska, where he remained serving in health services for over 23 years. During a residency in Preventive Medicine from 1967-1970 Fortuine received a M.P.H. (Harvard). From 1977-1980 he served as the United States liaison officer with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Fortuine retired from the Public Health Service in 1987 but continued to work as a volunteer physician one day a week for the next 12 years. His years since retirement have been spent writing on the subject of the history of medicine in the Arctic.