John Trowbridge (5.08.1843-18.02.1923) was an American physicist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1878). He was born in Boston. He graduated from the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard (1865). From 1869 he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (from 1880 as professor), and from 1884 he was also director of the Jefferson Physical Laboratory.
His research concerned the passage of electricity through gases, spectral analysis, the physics of heat and radio communication. He was the author of a number of textbooks and popular science books on physics.