Charles S. Maier (born February 23, 1939) is the Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University.

Maier served as the director of the Center for European Studies at Harvard, 1994-2001, and currently co-directs (with Sven Beckert, Sugata Bose, and Jean Comaroff) the Weatherhead Initiative in Global History.

He was married from 1961 to 2013 to the late Pauline Maier (née Rubbelke), Professor at MIT and noted American historian.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, an Alexander von Humboldt research prize fellowship, the Cross of Honor of the German Federal Republic, and the Cross of Honor for Science and Art, first class, of the Republic of Austria.

The University of Padua awarded him a laurea honoris causa in European Studies in January 2018.