Ronald Leslie Numbers (June 3, 1942 – July 24, 2023) was an American historian of science.

[citation needed] Numbers was educated at Southern Missionary College, and obtained his master's degree at Florida State University.

[6] In 1976, while still a lecturer at Loma Linda University, he published the book Prophetess of Health.

[9] Former archbishop of York John Habgood described it, in an article in The Times, as a "massively well-documented history" that "must surely be the definitive study of the rise and growth of" creationism.

[11][12][13] Among other things the work seeks to debunk various claims, such as that the medieval Christian Church suppressed science, that medieval Islamic culture was inhospitable to science, that the Church issued a universal ban on human dissection in the Middle Ages, that Galileo Galilei was imprisoned and tortured for advocating Copernicanism, or that the idea of creationism is a uniquely American phenomenon.