Isaac Adams Jr. (February 20, 1836 – July 24, 1911) was an American inventor and businessman, primarily notable for the invention of the first commercially viable nickel plating process.

[7] He was one of the founders of the United Nickel Company, formed on June 14, 1869, and served there as president, chemist and patent advisor until the dissolution of the business in 1890.

In October of the same year, Adams went to Europe with one of his investors, E. A. Quintard, with the goal to establish the plating industry there; a shop was immediately set up in Liverpool, another one in Paris in December 1869, a large plant in Birmingham by the spring of 1870.

[2] Multiple patents by Adams allowed the United Nickel Company in these "robber baron" times to successfully defend its market position through lawsuits, hundreds of them.

[13] At Harvard, Adams studied under professor of mineralogy and chemistry Josiah Parsons Cooke, investigating the electrolysis of nickel and cobalt salts.

[14] At the end of 1865, Adams, at the request of a gas-fixture dealer, Joseph Smith, tried to manufacture a substitute for the lava gas burner tip.

[15] By 1869 Adams became an expert on nickel deposition, producing few patents,[16] including the main one, filed on July 9, 1869, describing the use of sulfate baths for the plating.