Roger Adams (January 2, 1889 – July 6, 1971) was an American organic chemist who developed the eponymous Adams' catalyst, and helped determine the composition of natural substances such as complex vegetable oils and plant alkaloids. He isolated and identified CBD in 1940. As head of the Chemistry department at the University of Illinois from 1926 to 1954, he influenced graduate education in America, taught over 250 Ph.D. students and postgraduate students, and served in military science during World War I and World War II.

Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts to railroad official Austin W. Adams and Lydia Curtis, and grew up in a prosperous neighborhood in South Boston, the last child in a gifted family that included Adams's three older sisters (two went to Radcliffe College and one to Smith College). Adams was part of the prominent Adams family, and was descended from John Adams's grandfather.

Adams attending Boston Latin School and Cambridge Latin High School (now called Cambridge Rindge and Latin). In 1900, the family moved to Cambridge, which was closer to the two colleges.

Adams entered Harvard University in 1905 and completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree in three years. In his first year, he earned a John Harvard Honorary Scholarship by getting four As, and in his last year, he took advanced courses and began research in organic chemistry under H.A. Torrey. His years at Harvard were undistinguished, earning high grades in chemistry (his major) and mining (his minor). After graduation from Harvard in 1909, he worked towards his Ph.D. at Radcliffe College supported by a teaching assistantship. Torrey died unexpectedly in 1910, so Adams finished his Ph.D. under Charles Loring Jackson, George Shannon Forbes, and Latham Clarke. In 1912 he was initiated as a brother of Alpha Chi Sigma at Omicron chapter at Harvard. As an outstanding Ph.D. of 1912, Adams received a Parker Traveling Scholarship for 1912 and 1913, which he used to work at the laboratory of Emil Fischer and Otto Diels in Berlin, Germany and that of Richard Willstätter in Dahlem outside of Berlin.

After returning from Europe in 1913, Adams returned to Harvard and worked as a research assistant for Charles L. Jackson for $800 a year. During the next three years, he taught organic chemistry at Harvard and Radcliffe, initiated the first elementary organic chemistry laboratory at Harvard and began his own research program. Several other prominent contemporaries of Adams at Harvard Graduate School were Elmer Keiser Bolton, Farrington Daniels, Frank C. Whitmore, James B. Sumner and James Bryant Conant.

In 1916, Adams accepted an offer of an assistant professorship from William A. Noyes, head of the chemistry department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He began a career at UIUC that would span 56 years. Adams succeeded Noyes as department head in 1926, and remained in that position until 1954. During this time, Adams made several well-known discoveries.

Roger Adams and his students developed the so-called Adams' catalyst, which is one of the most readily-prepared and active catalysts for hydrogenation reactions. The catalyst can be prepared by fusing sodium nitrate with chloroplatinic acid or ammonium chloroplatinate. Adams's group also developed a low-pressure apparatus for using the catalyst, which had a profound effect in the synthesis and structural elucidation of organic compounds as well as biochemical compounds.

Working at the Noyes Laboratory, Adams and his more than 250 graduate students made many significant discoveries: