José Francisco Correia da Serra (6 June 1750 – 11 September 1823) was a Portuguese abbot, polymath, philosopher, diplomat, politician and scientist.

In 1786, he fled to France, and remained there till the death of Portuguese King-consort Pedro III, when he again returned to his homeland, but political difficulties forced him to leave the country again.

[8][6] In 1820, he was recalled home to Portugal, where he was appointed a member of the financial council, and elected to a seat in the "General Extraordinary and Constituent Cortes of the Portuguese Nation", but he died only three years later.

Also noteworthy is the study he published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, in 1818, on the formations and soils of Kentucky, in which he mentions the existence of fossils of calcareous shells (p.176) and of plants that turned into coal (p.178).

To his pupil Francis Walker Gilmer (1790-1826), Correia da Serra acknowledged "I find that the study of fossil remains of plants is now becoming fashionable; discoveries will no doubt be made in this new career" (letter signed in Philadelphia on August 6, 1819).