John Harvard (1607–1638) was an English Puritan minister in colonial New England whose deathbed bequest to the "schoale or colledge" founded two years earlier by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that the colony consequently ordered "that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to be built at Cambridge shalbee called Harvard Colledge".

Harvard was born in Southwark, England, and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1637 he emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in America, where he became a teaching elder and assistant preacher of the First Church in Charlestown.

Harvard died of tuberculosis in 1638, leaving a large sum of money and his 400-volume scholar's library to the colony's new school, which the colony then voted to name in his honor. Harvard University considers him the most honored of its founders—those whose efforts and contributions in its early days "ensure[d] its permanence"—and a statue in his honor is a prominent feature of Harvard Yard.