Jay Mathers Savage (born August 1928 in Santa Monica, California) is an American herpetologist known for his research on reptiles and amphibians of Central America.
He is a past president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and the Southern California Academy of Sciences.
He received his bachelor's (1950), master's (1954), and doctoral (1955) degrees from Stanford University.
He has produced around 200 publications, including the books Evolution (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968) and The Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Savage is commemorated in the scientific names of 18 animal species, as well as the frog genus Barycholos (from the Greek word for "savage").