John Amsden Starkweather (August 30, 1925 – March 10, 2001) was an American Professor of Medical Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

He was a pioneer in taking a psychologist's view of the emerging computer field and incorporating concepts as well as numbers to language processing.

[citation needed] He was raised in Seattle, Washington, and served in the United States Coast Guard during World War II from 1943 to 1945.

He joined the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco in 1955, where he spent his entire career.

Starkweather chaired a working group for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers from 1987 through 1991 that established standards for PILOT.

In the 1960s, Starkweather was the logical person to develop a computer center for UCSF, which he led for 15 years until its operation was ready for a non-faculty administrator.

During his career, he served in many university-wide and campus-wide leadership roles, including Chair of the UCSF Academic Senate.

Several of his students became leaders in their fields, including the psychologists Paul Ekman, Rudolph Moos, the psychiatrists Donald Langsley, Kay Blacker, and the computer scientist Gio Wiederhold.