Henry Bradford Nason (born in Foxborough, Massachusetts, 22 June 1831; died in Troy, New York, 18 January 1895) was a United States chemist.

Having attended school for a short time at Newburyport, Massachusetts, Henry Bradford entered the Adelphian Academy at North Bridgewater in 1843, where his attention was drawn to the study of natural science, and he began to make collections of the local minerals.

He entered Williston Seminary in December 1847, where his taste for natural science grew; he also became interested in chemistry, and enriched his collections of plants and minerals.

[1] He afterward spent some time with Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg, and with Karl Friedrich Plattner at the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg.

In the next year, he traveled through Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and a part of Germany, and spent a semester in Göttingen in the study of geology and mineralogy, under Waltershausen.

In 1872 and 1875 he made three visits to California, in the course of which he traveled in Nevada and Idaho, and the mining regions of Colorado and Utah, and included in his third trip the Yosemite Valley.

There he worked on the refining of petroleum, methods of testing, analysis of the composition of crude oils, and the abatement of nuisances arising from smoke, odors, and other products of refineries.