Muriel Robertson, FRSTM, F.I.Biol was a Scottish protozoologist and bacteriologist at the Lister Institute, London from 1915 to 1961. She made key discoveries of the life cycle of trypanosomes. She was one of the founding members of the Society for Microbiology, along with Alexander Fleming and Marjory Stephenson.

The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, informally known as the Lister Institute, was established as a research institute in 1891, with bacteriologist Marc Armand Ruffer as its first director, using a grant of £250,000 from Edward Cecil Guinness of the Guinness family. It had premises in Chelsea in London, Sudbury in Suffolk, and Elstree in Hertfordshire, England. It was the first medical research charity in the United Kingdom. It was renamed the Jenner Institute in 1898 and then, in 1903, as the Lister Institute in honour of the great surgeon and medical pioneer, Dr Joseph Lister. In 1905, the institute became a school of the University of London.