Dr. Bedoukian founded Bedoukian Research, Inc. in 1972. His contributions to the industry included the commercialization of numerous important materials, such as leaf alcohol (a substance that gives a fresh green odor to fruits and vegetables) and several ingredients found in many famous perfumes, including "Charlie." When it was published in 1967, his work Perfumery and Flavoring Synthetics was described as one of the top 100 scientific/technical books written that year. Its third revised edition was published by Allured Publications in 1986.

Prior to establishing his own business in 1972, Dr. Bedoukian worked in the flavor and fragrance industry for 25 years as technical director, perfumer, and consultant for many companies including Compagnie Parento, Faberge, and International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF).

Dr. Bedoukian was also an avid numismatist who became the world's foremost authority on Armenian coinage. He once wrote, "The challenges encountered in organic chemistry are almost as exciting as those in numismatics, but lack the romance of history." His extensive study in the area of ancient and medieval numismatics led to the establishment of Armenian Numismatics as a major discipline in its own right. He wrote more than 100 scholarly articles and more than a dozen books including: Coinage of Cilician Armenia, Roman Coins Related to Armenia, Medieval Armenian Coins, and Coinage of the Artaxiads of Armenia (Oxford University Press). In his travels abroad, Dr. Bedoukian sought to identify rare Armenian coins found in museums and private collections, as well as other Armenian artifacts. His diverse collection of over 5,000 coins and antiquities was donated by Dr. Bedoukian and his wife Victoria to museums and libraries throughout the United States, Vienna, England, France, and Armenia. The Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts, exhibited Dr. Bedoukian's collections in 1987 and 2000.

Dr. Bedoukian was a member of the American Numismatic Society, a "Member Correspondant" of the Societe Francaise de Numismatique, and a fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Armenian Numismatic Society in California. In 1993, Dr. Bedoukian received the Glenn Smedley Award from the American Numismatic Association for his devotion to serving and educating collectors.

Dr. Bedoukian was born in Sivas, Turkey in 1912, the youngest of eight children of Harout and Serpouhi. Of his family members, only Dr. Bedoukian, age 3, his mother, two sisters, and a brother, Kerop, survived the Armenian genocide and deportations from Turkey in 1915. His family's grueling exodus and survival through Aleppo, Syria, Constantinople, Turkey, and Sofia, Bulgaria, and eventual immigration to Montreal, Canada, is recounted in his brother Kerop's autobiography, Some of Us Survived. Dr. Bedoukian graduated from McGill University in Canada with a degree in chemical engineering in 1936, and later attained his Doctorate in Organic Chemistry in 1941. In 1945, he came to the United States.

He was a member of the American Society of Perfumers, an honorary member of the Society of Flavor Chemists, and a 57-year member of the American Chemical Society. He was posthumously awarded a "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Fragrance Materials Association of the United States.