Robert Burns Woodward (April 10, 1917 - July 8, 1979) was an American organic chemist.

At an early age, Woodward was attracted to chemistry and engaged in private study while he attended the public primary and secondary schools of Quincy, Massachusetts. In 1965 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his synthetic work with natural products (including many antibiotics and the total syntheses of quinine, cholesterol, cortisone, strychnine, lysergic acid, reserpine, chlorophyll, colchicine, or vitamin B-12). He continued working on organic syntheses, developing a process for the synthesis of vitamin B-12 in 1971.
Woodward received numerous awards from scientific societies and honorary degrees, and was made a member or honorary member of a large number of academies all over the world.
In 1938 he married Irja Pullman, and in 1946 he married Eudoxia Muller. From the first marriage he had two daughters, and from the second one daughter and one son.
He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while working on the synthesis of an antibiotic, erythromycin.