Edward Livingston Youmans (June 3, 1821  – January 18, 1887) was an American scientific writer, editor, and lecturer and founder of Popular Science magazine.

His sister Eliza Ann Youmans, in addition to being of great help to Edward in dealing with his blindness, was a science writer herself, chiefly on botanical subjects.

[2] In 1845, his sister, Eliza Ann Youmans, became his reader and amanuensis, and with her aid he undertook the study of chemistry and physics.

In his lectures on the "Chemistry of the Sunbeam" and the "Dynamics of Life", he was the first to expound popularly the doctrines of the conservation of energy and the mutual relation of forces.

[2] Early on Youmans became deeply interested in the diffusion of standard scientific works in the United States, particularly those on evolution philosophy.

Herbert Spencer's books alone, on behalf of which he spared no effort, reached a sale of 132,000 copies by 1890, and the foreign authors whose works he used for years enjoyed, by voluntary arrangement with the D. Appleton & Company, the benefits of international copyright, of the justice and need of which Youmans was from the beginning of his literary life an ardent advocate.

[3] Youmans started the "International Scientific Series" in 1871, by means of which works by the greatest scientists of all nations were published simultaneously in the principal modern languages.