Russell Alan Hulse (born November 28, 1950) is an American physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with his thesis advisor Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation".

Hulse was born in New York City and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and the Cooper Union.

Neutron star rotation emits impulses that are extremely regular and stable in the radio wave region and is nearby condensed material body gravitation (non-detectable in the visible field).

Hulse, Taylor, and other colleagues have used this first binary pulsar to make high-precision tests of general relativity, demonstrating the existence of gravitational radiation.

After receiving his PhD, Hulse did postdoctoral work at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.