Sir Samuel Phillips Bedson, FRS (1 December 1886 – 11 May 1969) was a British microbiologist who was professor emeritus of bacteriology at the University of London.
In 1934, he was appointed to the Goldsmiths Company’s Chair of Bacteriology at the London Hospital Medical College, from which he retired in 1952.
[1] He married Dorothea Annie, the elder daughter of Henry Hoffert, a senior inspector of schools for the Board of Education.
[1] His second son, Henry Bedson, was the head of the Microbiology Department at the University of Birmingham Medical School and committed suicide in 1978 following the last known recorded death from smallpox, which was linked to his laboratory.
[3][4] After his retirement, Bedson ran the virus unit of the British Empire Cancer Campaign in the Bland Sutton Institute of Pathology at the Middlesex Hospital until 1962.