Eben Norton Horsford (July 27, 1818 – January 1, 1893) was an American scientist who taught agricultural chemistry in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard from 1847 to 1863.

Later he was known for his reformulation of baking powder, his interest in Viking settlements in North America, and the monuments he built to Leif Erikson.

"At home he showed a certain inventive or mechanical skill, great ability in sketching, and unbounded interest in collecting specimens from the rich fossil deposits on the family farm.

At some point he met Mary L'Hommedieu Gardiner of Shelter Island, New York, a student, and she became the object of his affection, but her father disapproved of the relationship on the grounds that Horsford's income was insufficient to support a family.

In 1842 he attended an event of the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists, and thereafter took up a study of Justus von Liebig's Organic Chemistry.

[1] After he qualified to work in Liebig's lab in October 1845, he took up the analysis of nitrogen content of grains, an index of their nutritive value as fodder.

Henry Darwin Rogers had been the leading candidate for the Rumford Chair of Physics until John White Webster got involved.

Rogers had been tarnished by association with Vestiges of Creation, and as recommended by Webster, Horsford in Germany visited laboratories and industrial plants before returning from Liebig's lab.

In April 1854 Horsford realized that the demands put upon him were unreasonably onerous and he wrote the Corporation: "The necessity of the elementary instruction made it my fortune to be oppressed pecuniarily and professionally.

He donated 280 volumes for the first library, which was initially housed in a closet in the Old Store, a building that functioned as a post office, telegraph station, and local meeting place.

The creation of a commercially successful baking powder was the basis of his wealth, enabling him to pursue personal and philanthropic interests in later life.

[8][15][16] In honor of Horsford's generous donations to Wellesley College, a building named Norumbega Hall was dedicated in 1886 and celebrated by a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier.