Jesse Wakefield Beams (December 25, 1898[1] in Belle Plaine, Kansas[2] – July 23, 1977[3]) was an American physicist at the University of Virginia.

He spent the next three years in a physics fellowship at Yale University, where he performed research on the photoelectric effect with Ernest Lawrence.

[4] Beams was appointed a professor of physics at the University of Virginia in 1929 and was chair of the department from 1948 to 1962.

After World War II, centrifuge separation of uranium isotopes was perfected by German scientists and engineers working in the Soviet Union.

In 1953 Beams was appointed the Francis H. Smith Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia.