Arthur Adams (1820 in Gosport, Hampshire – 1878) was an English physician and naturalist.

Adams was assistant surgeon Royal Navy on board HMS Samarang during the survey of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, from 1843 to 1846.

He retired as Staff Surgeon aboard flagship HMS Royal Adelaide at Plymouth in 1870.

He was a prolific malacologist who described "hundreds of new species, most of them unillustrated and insufficiently diagnosed".

[2] He partly worked together with his brother Henry Adams (1813–1877) and together they wrote The genera of recent mollusca: arranged according to their organization (three volumes, 1858).