Ronald Elbert Mickens (born February 7, 1943) is an American physicist and mathematician who is the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Physics at Clark Atlanta University.

[10] Mickens attended Fisk University as an undergraduate and graduated in 1964 with degrees in mathematics and physics.

He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1968 from Vanderbilt University and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT.

[11] Continuing his research efforts, he received a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to investigate elementary particle physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[10] Mickens was also a co-founder of the National Conference of Black Physics Students[14] and he was a member of the founding council of the Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute,[15] an organization founded in 1988 by Nobel laureate in physics Abdus Salam to encourage collaboration between African and American physicists, where he continues to serve as a council member.