Robert Harold Compton

Robert Harold Compton (6 August 1886 in Tewkesbury – 11 July 1979 in Cape Town) was a South African botanist.

The Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which he founded in Cape Town in 1939, was named in his honour.

He stayed on at Cambridge from 1911 to 1913 as a Demonstrator in Botany, and joined a field expedition to New Caledonia in 1914, collecting extensively and discovering some new genera and species.

He enlisted for war service from 1915 to 1918 and arrived in South Africa in March 1919 to become Director of the National Botanic Gardens at Kirstenbosch.

On retirement in 1953 he chose to settle in Swaziland and was commissioned by the Swazi Government to undertake a botanical survey of the country.