Robert Hoddle was a surveyor and artist. He was the first Surveyor-General of Victoria from 1851 to 1853. He was previously the Surveyor-in-Charge of the Port Phillip District from 1837 to 1851. He became Surveyor-General upon the proclamation of the Port Phillip District as the new Colony of Victoria within the British Empire in July 1851. He is especially recognized for the design and layout of the Hoddle Grid in 1837, the area which forms the Melbourne central business district (CBD) of Melbourne. He was also an accomplished artist and depicted scenes of the Port Phillip region and New South Wales. Hoddle was one of the earliest-known European artists to depict Ginninderra, the area now occupied by Canberra, Australia's National Capital.

The Hoddle Grid is the contemporary name given to the approximately 1-by-0.5-mile grid of streets that form the Melbourne central business district, Australia. Bounded by Flinders Street, Spring Street, La Trobe Street, and Spencer Street, it lies at an angle to the rest of the Melbourne suburban grid, and so is easily recognisable. It is named after the surveyor Robert Hoddle, who marked it out in 1837, establishing the first formal town plan. This grid of streets, laid out when there were only a few hundred settlers, became the nucleus for what is now Melbourne, a city of over five million people.