James Andrew Harris (March 26, 1932 – December 12, 2000) was an American radiochemist who was involved in the discovery of elements 104 and 105 (rutherfordium and dubnium, respectively).

Harris was the head of the Heavy Isotopes Production Group, part of the Nuclear Chemistry Division of the University of California, Berkeley.

[1] Harris met his wife Helen at Huston-Tillotson College, where they were both completing their undergraduate studies; they were married in 1957 and had five children, Cedric, Keith, Hilda, Kimberly, and James II.

[7] He initially entered college on a music scholarship, but switched to studying chemistry and received a bachelor of science degree in 1953.

[8] Harris left Tracerlab Inc. to work on isotope division in the nuclear chemistry department of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at University of California-Berkeley.

Harris' job was to design and purify targets that would be used in Berkeley's Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator to discover elements 104 and 105.

In 1997 the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry settled the dispute: element 104 was given the name suggested by the American research team, rutherfordium, after the influential British physicist.