John Komlos (born 28 December 1944) is an American economic historian of Hungarian descent and former holder of the chair of economic history at the University of Munich.

[1][2] Komlos was born in 1944 in Budapest in Hungary during the Holocaust.

[3] After becoming refugees during the 1956 revolution, his family fled to the United States where Komlos finally grew up in Chicago.

[1][5] After inspired by Robert Fogel to work on the history of human height,[2] Komlos devoted most of his academic career developing and expanding the research agenda that became known as Anthropometric history,[2][6][7] the study of the effect of economic development on human biology as indicated by the physical stature or the obesity rate prevalence of a population.

[5][1] In 2003, Komlos founded Economics and Human Biology, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on biological economics, economics in the context of human biology and health.