National Order of the Cedar (1995), Ziad Rafiq Beydoun (Arabic: زياد رفيق بيضون; 1924–1998) was a Lebanese petroleum geologist, leading authority on the geology of the Middle East and Emeritus Professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB).

[1] On 27 August 1948, he joined the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) as an exploration geologist with a field party led by Mike Morton in north-west Syria.

[2] Beydoun was multi-lingual, speaking Arabic, English, French and Turkish, and spent the next 15 years working for the company in its oil concession areas across the Middle East.

[1] Upon rejoining IPC, Beydoun was posted to Qatar but following retrenchment of company operations, he was seconded to Calouste Gulbenkian's firm, Partex.

In 1963 he returned to Lebanon, taking up the post of assistant professor at AUB and acting as geology advisor to the Ministry of National Economy.

In 1995, he was awarded the Medal of the National Order of the Cedar by the Government of Lebanon for "distinguished services to geological investigations and research".

In late September of the same year, the Prime Minister of Yemen presented his widow with the Republic's Science Medal, awarded posthumously to him in recognition of his unique contribution to the study of Yemeni geology.