Athel Cornish-Bowden (born 3 April 1943) is a British biochemist known for his numerous textbooks, particularly those on enzyme kinetics and his work on metabolic control analysis.

at Oxford with Jeremy R. Knowles,[5] and carried out post-doctoral work with Daniel E. Koshland Jr.[6] Cornish-Bowden has authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers and nine textbooks[7][8] on topics related to enzyme kinetics, mathematics and historical perspectives in science.

According to Google Scholar, the textbook, Fundamentals of enzyme kinetics,[9] has been cited over 3000 times by secondary sources.

[10] Cornish-Bowden's research can be divided into three primary areas: Enzyme kinetics, metabolic control, done mainly in collaboration with Jannie Hofmeyr, and the origin of life.

Cornish-Bowden is most well known for his introduction of the direct-linear plot for estimating enzyme parameters,[34] his work on Hexokinase evolution and kinetics,[35] and his insight into the control and regulation of metabolism.