Karl August Folkers (September 1, 1906 – December 7, 1997) was an American biochemist who made major contributions to the isolation and identification of bioactive natural products.

[2][1] Folkers graduated from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois in 1928.

[4] As a Merck Pharmaceuticals research team, Folkers, Fern P. Rathe, and Edward Anthony Kaczka were the first to isolate the antibiotic cathomycin in 1955.

[6] In 1958 his Merck team determined the structure of coenzyme Q10.

[7] He later served as director of the Institute of Biomedical Research at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was also Ashbel Smith Professor of Chemistry.