Timothy David Noakes (born 1949) is a South African scientist, and an emeritus professor in the Division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine at the University of Cape Town.

He is known for his work in sports science and for his support of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF, Banting) diet, as set out in his books The Real Meal Revolution and Lore of Nutrition: Challenging Conventional Dietary Beliefs.

Noakes was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (today Harare, Zimbabwe) in 1949 as the son of a third-generation tobacco exporter[2] and moved to South Africa at the age of five.

[4] In 2005 he undertook a series of experiments in the Arctic and Antarctic on South African (British-born) swimmer Lewis Gordon Pugh to understand human capability in extreme cold.

He discovered that Pugh had the ability to raise his core body temperature before entering the water in anticipation of the cold and coined the phrase 'anticipatory thermo-genesis' to describe it.

[2] Despite following his diet, Noakes's fasting glucose levels barely budged, and he started taking the diabetes management drug metformin and dietary supplements to control the condition.

Wim de Villiers, dean of the faculty, accused Noakes of having no real scientific evidence to back up his assertions.

Controversially, on 28 October 2016, the HPSCA incorrectly released a statement announcing that Noakes had been found guilty of misconduct, namely "giving unconventional advice over social media".

[22] In it Noakes describes his conversion to LCHF dieting, and writes that in his view the lipid hypothesis is the "biggest mistake in modern medicine".