Robert Arthur Buddicom

Robert Arthur Buddicom, also known as Robert Arthur Bedford (7 November 1874–14 February 1951) was an English-Australian scientist and local entrepreneur.

His early education was at Charterhouse School and Uppingham School. He excelled at metalwork, composition of Greek and Latin verse and electrical apparatus. His great-uncle William Barber Buddicom discouraged him from pursuing an engineering career, so Buddicom also studied biology and chemistry, and completed his science degree at Keble College, Oxford in 1897. He was an Oxford scholar at the marine biological station at Naples, Italy and presented a paper on the potential for life in all matter. He was curator of the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery in 1900–01. He was a demonstrator and lecturer at London Hospital Medical College from 1906 to 1914. He was involved in court action in February 1915 when he was a director of Stolz Electrophone Company and found to have been involved in misrepresentation in a prospectus.

He left his first wife in England and migrated to Australia as Robert Bedford with his second wife/partner Ethel Hilda Lewis. He settled at Kyancutta on Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. He served there as physician veterinary surgeon, radio station proprietor and post office operator. He constructed an aerodrome and established the short-lived Eyre Peninsula Airways (1929–1935) and operated a range of other ventures in the town. He established and ran the Kyancutta Museum.