Joseph Sweetman Ames, Ph. D (1864-1943) was a physics professor at Johns Hopkins University, provost of the university from 1926 until 1929, and university president from 1929 until 1935. ref

He was born at Manchester, Vt. He is best remembered as one of the founding members of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA) and its longtime chairman (1919-1939). NASA Ames Research Center is named after him.

He wrote:

• The Theory of Physics (1897)
• Elements of Physics (1900)
• The Induction of Electric Currents (two volumes, 1900)
• Text-Book of General Physics (1904)

Mr. Ames was also an assistant editor of Astro-Physical Journal and associate editor of the American Journal of Science; editor-in-chief of the Scientific Memoir Series; and editor of J. von Fraunhofer's memoirs on Prismatic and Diffractive Spectra (1898).

American science writers 1864 births 1943 deaths