Bob Baker

Robert Wilfred Baker (9 April 1917 – 3 July 1985) was an Australian lawyer, legal scholar and politician, who was elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1969 as a Liberal member for Denison. He held his seat until 1980, when the results of the 1979 state election were voided and a by-election was held, in which Baker lost his seat to fellow Liberal Gabriel Haros.

Early life and education Baker was born in Adelaide, South Australia in April 1917 to labour relations manager Cecil Roy Baker and author Alice Daisy Turner. The family moved to Tasmania in 1919, where Baker was educated at Moonah State School and Hobart High School, before gaining a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Tasmania in 1939 whilst working as an articled clerk. In December that year, Baker was selected as Tasmania's Rhodes Scholar for 1940, but postponed his studies to enlist in the Royal Australian Navy from 1940 to 1945 during World War II, obtaining the rank of lieutenant. After the war, Baker returned to Oxford to study a Bachelor of Civil Law (1946) and Bachelor of Letters (1947) at Lincoln College.

In 1983, Baker wrote and self-published a memoir, Tasmania Now and Again.