Gian Franco Bottazzo (1 August 1946 – 15 September 2017) was an Italian physician who spent most of his career in London.

[1] As a medical student, he spent a summer at Middlesex Hospital in London under the tutelage of the immunologist Deborah Doniach.

[2] The same year, Bottazzo and Doniach published a landmark paper in The Lancet showing that type 1 diabetes is associated with antibodies against insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, thus demonstrating the autoimmune nature of the disease.

He also worked at the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital in collaboration with Andrew Cudworth; together they published numerous studies, mostly on the human leukocyte antigen system.

[2] In 1986, he was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine together with Lelio Orci and Albert Renold for contributions to the understanding of diabetes.