Andrew Alm Benson (September 24, 1917 – January 16, 2015) was an American biologist and a professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, until his retirement in 1989.

[3] He studied as an undergraduate and masters student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he learned optics from Luis Alvarez and worked in the chemistry lab of Glenn T.

[3] At that time he also became a conscientious objector to the war in Europe, a political position that caused difficulties for him when he moved back to Berkeley following his graduation.

[1] In 1962, the United States Department of Energy gave him the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for his work using radioactive isotopes to understand the carbon cycle.

[9][10] He also received the Sugar Research Foundation Award in 1950[11] and the Stephen Hales Prize of the American Society of Plant Biologists in 1972 for his discovery of ribulose as a product of the carbon cycle.