Sir Robert John Kane FRS MRIA (24 September 1809 – 16 February 1890) was an Irish chemist and educator.

[1] Kane was born at 48 Henry Street, Dublin on 24 September 1809 to John and Eleanor Kean (née Troy).

[3] The young Kane studied chemistry at his father's factory, and attended lectures at the Royal Dublin Society as a teenager.

[1] He published his first paper in 1828, Observations on the existence of chlorine in the native peroxide of manganese, in the London Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and Art.

In 1843 he was awarded the Royal Irish Academy's Cunningham Medal for his work on the nature and constitution of compounds of Ammonia.

After a motion to admit women to the University, put forward by Prof. Samuel Haughton at Academic Council in Trinity College Dublin, 10 March 1880, Kane was appointed to a committee of 10 men to look into the matter.