Elwood Vernon Jensen (January 13, 1920 – December 16, 2012) was the Distinguished University Professor, George and Elizabeth Wile Chair in Cancer Research at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine's Vontz Center for Molecular Studies.

[1] Jensen was born in Fargo, North Dakota,[2] in the United States, received his bachelor's degree from Wittenberg University in 1940 and PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1944.

From 1947 Jensen studied steroid hormones at Chicago, where he isolated estrogen receptors and discovered their importance in breast cancer.

[3] Jensen worked closely with Nobel laureate Charles Huggins; he joined the research team at the Ben May Laboratory for Cancer (now the Ben May Department of Cancer Research) in 1951 and became director after Huggins retired.

[1] At the University of Chicago, Professor Jensen was the Charles B. Huggins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago.