James Barney Pollack (July 9, 1938 – June 13, 1994) was an American astrophysicist who worked for NASA's Ames Research Center.

Pollack was born on July 9, 1938, in New York City,[1] and was brought up in Woodmere, Long Island by a Jewish family that was in the women's garment business.

He then received his master's in nuclear physics at University of California, Berkeley in 1962 and his Ph.D from Harvard in 1965, where he was a student of Carl Sagan.

[4] Dorion Sagan told how his father came to the defense of Pollack's partner in a problem with obtaining treatment at the university health service emergency department.

[7] The work of Pollack et al. (1996) on the formation of giant planets ("core accretion paradigm") is seen today as the standard model.