Robert 'Bob' Leonard Pulsford was born on 2nd September 1915 in Waterloo, New South Wales (NSW), Australia. He attended Hawkesbury Agricultural College and worked as a jackaroo on three properties in NSW. In 1941, he enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force for a year in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG), serving in Port Moresby, Buna, Finschhafen and Madang in a Malaria Control Unit. After demobilization he completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA) at the University of Sydney, graduating with Honours in Anthropology. He began his service in TPNG in April 1950 with the Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries (DASF), based first at Boram near Wewak, and then at Urip near Dagua, 30 miles west of Wewak, where he managed the Dagua Rural Progress Society, producing rice and peanuts as cash crops.

In 1953, he married Mary Upton and their children were born in the Territory; Ian in Wewak and Susan in Lorengau. In 1955, he was posted to Manus, as District Agricultural Officer, where copra was the main economic crop, and in 1958 to Taliligap in the Gazelle Peninsula where he was in charge of a training centre with a focus on cocoa production. He was in Rabaul for two years as District Agricultural Officer for East New Britain then changed careers in 1963 and became the first Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at the newly formed Papuan Medical College in Port Moresby teaching medical students and nurses. He retired in December 1973 when the Medical College became the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG). During this period, he co-authored 'Health in a Developing Country' with Prof John Cawte. He was awarded a Masters (MA) degree from the University of Sydney for his thesis: 'Changing Attitudes to Illness and Misfortune amongst the Motu – Koita'; the result of ten years study in Pari urban village near Port Moresby. Pulsford died in 2004.