Elmer Otto Kraemer (February 27, 1898 – September 7, 1943) was an American chemist whose studies and published results materially aided in the transformation of colloid chemistry from a qualitative to a quantitative science.

For eleven years, from 1927 to 1938, he was the leader of research chemists studying fundamental and industrial colloid chemistry problems and a peer of Wallace Hume Carothers at the Experimental Station of the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company where both men contributed to the invention of nylon that was publicly announced on October 27, 1938.

Meanwhile, Elmer Kraemer (1898–1943) and William D. Lansing (1902–1937) at Du Pont later used the ultracentrifuge to determine the molecular weight of a synthetic polymer in 1933.

[4] In a formal process sponsored by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., colleagues of Dr. Elmer Otto Kraemer selected him as one of the leading 250 scientists out of the 28,000 listed in the 1938 "American Men of Science.

du Pont de Nemours and Co. from 1927 to 1938 when he left to work in Uppsala, Sweden and Berlin, Germany for a few years before returning to the U.S. to serve the Franklin Institute.

Elmer Kraemer's scientific career was prematurely cut short by his unexpected and quick death from a cerebral hemorrhage, on September 7, 1943, at St. Joseph's Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, while he was attending a luncheon at the 106th meeting of the American Chemical Society.