Elizabeth Osborne King (October 12, 1912 – April 8, 1966) was an American microbiologist who discovered and described bacteria of medical importance at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the late 1940s through the early 1960s.

[1] In 1943 she joined the Women's Army Corps and served as a commissioned officer during World War II at Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland.

[1] Her time in the General Bacteriology Laboratory sparked an interest in disease causing gram-negative bacillus bacteria that did not belong to the Enterobacteriaceae family.

She reported her findings in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology with her paper Studies on a Group of Previously Unclassified Bacteria Associated with Meningitis in Infants.

Her systematic methods eventually lead to the simplified identification of other bacteria such as Actinobacter calccoaceticus (previously Herellea vaginicola), Pasteurella species, and Campylobacter fetus (previously Vibrio fetus)[1] In the 1960s, King identified a novel bacteria from human respiratory secretions, blood, and bone and joint exudates that was designated Moraxella kingii in her honor shortly after her death.

[7][8] In 1964, she presented her work Identification of Unusual Gram-Negative Pathogenic Bacteria at the annual round table meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, D.C.