Joseph Lennox Donation Pawan MBE (6 September 1887 – 3 November 1957) was a Trinidadian bacteriologist who was the first person to show that rabies could be spread by vampire bats to other animals and humans.

Born in Trinidad, Pawan was educated at Saint Mary's College in Port of Spain and won an Island Scholarship in 1907.

At first, his basic findings that bats transmitted rabies to people and animals were thought fantastic and ridiculed.

[4] He was sometimes referred to as John Lennox Pawan by Arthur Greenhall, who was a close friend and associate.

He was the author of numerous papers and studied such subjects as the water supplies of Trinidad; the histology of Aedes and Anophole (sic = Anopheles) mosquitos; sickle-cell anaemia; and the mosquito transmission of Venezuelan Equine Encephalomeyelitis Virus in Trinidad.