Richard Hesse (20 February 1868 in Nordhausen – 28 December 1944 in Berlin) was a German zoologist and ecologist.
Hesse worked in the spirit of Karl August Möbius with biogeography and ecology of vertebrates.
He published Tierbau und Tierleben [translated title: Animal form and life] in 1910 together with Franz Theodor Doflein.
The title of this work paraphrases Schimper's classical Pflanzengeographie auf Physiologischer Grundlage (1898).
The book was translated to English as Ecological Animal Geography (1937, 1951) by W.C. Allee and Karl P.