Charles F. Harbison (1904–1989) was an American entomologist and the curator of entomology at the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1942 to 1969.

[3] Harbison grew up in National City and (briefly) in the Imperial Valley, where his father was a farmer and poultry rancher and provided sightseeing tours into Baja, California.

Throughout the Depression, Harbison maintained the museum's entomology collections and participated in many of the museum's research expeditions, including field work in Baja California, Organ Pipe National Monument (working as assistant to zoologist and Curator of Birds and Mammals Laurence M. Huey), and other sites in southwestern Arizona.

In 1943, when the U.S. Navy occupied the museum, Harbison moved part of the entomology collection and his junior naturalist educational materials to the Brooklyn Grammar School in San Diego, maintaining a "Children's Museum," teaching, and leading field trips for young naturalists throughout the war.

On Clipperton Island (a desolate atoll 900 miles south of Baja California), Harbison found 13 orders of insects as well as spiders and other arthropods.