Robert Paul Kraft (June 16, 1927 – May 26, 2015) was an American astronomer.

[1] He performed pioneering work on Cepheid variables, stellar rotation, novae, and the chemical evolution of the Milky Way.

His name is also associated with the Kraft break: the abrupt change in the average rotation rate of main sequence stars around spectral type F8.

[2] Kraft served as director of the Lick Observatory (1981–1991), president of the American Astronomical Society (1974–1976), and president of the International Astronomical Union (1997–2000).

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