John Henry Hemming CMG FSA FRSL FRGS (born January 5, 1935) is a historian, explorer, and expert on the Incas and indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin.

He was educated in the United Kingdom at Eton College, in Canada at McGill University, and earned a doctorate at Oxford.

In 1961, with fellow Oxford graduates Richard Mason and Kit Lambert, he was part of the Iriri River Expedition into unexplored country in central Brazil.

However, after four months, an unknown indigenous people found the group's trail, laid an ambush, and killed Richard Mason with arrows and clubs.

On various expeditions he visited 45 tribes throughout Brazil – four of them (Surui, Parakana, Asurini and Galera Nambikwara) at the time that Brazilian teams made the first-ever face-to-face contact.

It was described by Hugh Thomson in the Daily Telegraph as a book that "will stand as the definitive single-volume work on the subject.

[9] In August 2018, he was awarded the President's Medal of the British Academy "for his work in the field of the colonial history and ethnography of Brazil and Peru, and the promotion of the protection of endangered societies".