Edward James Wickson (August 3, 1848 – July 17, 1923) was an American agronomist and journalist who was a leader in agricultural education in California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[4] His expertise in matters pertaining to the dairy industry was such that in 1874 and 1875 he was chosen to speak to state dairymen's conventions from New England to the Midwest.

During his tenure at Pacific Rural Press, he wrote widely on the agricultural topics of the day and published several encyclopedic books on growing fruit and vegetable crops that remain useful resources for farmers.

Wickson is credited with being one of the two men (the other being former Stanford University president David Starr Jordan) who helped created the legend of Burbank as one of the great self-taught leaders of modern agricultural science.

[9] In 1905–06, he helped to select the sites for what became the University Farm at Davisville (now Davis), the Southern California Pathological Laboratory at Whittier, and the Citrus Experiment Station at Riverside.

[3] Throughout his career in both agricultural publishing and education, he retained a strong bias towards knowledge gained in the field over laboratory-oriented forms of training.

[2] From 1877 to 1906, he was a member (and later secretary and president) of the San Francisco Microscopical Society, an organization that championed the emerging use of microscopy for scientific research.