Wick C. Haxton (born August 21, 1949, in Santa Cruz, California) is an American theoretical nuclear physicist and astrophysicist.

[4] Haxton grew up in Santa Cruz,[5] studied from 1967 at the University of California, Santa Cruz (BA in physics and mathematics 1971) and received his doctorate in 1976 at Stanford University for his work on Semileptonic Weak Interactions in Complex Nuclei (1975).

[6][2] From 1975 to 1977 he worked at the Institute for Nuclear Physics of the University of Mainz and then until 1985 as Oppenheimer Fellow in the theoretical division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

He remained there as professor of physics and astronomy until 2009, serving from 1991 to 2006 as director of the National Institute for Nuclear Theory (INT).

[1][9] Haxton and his colleagues put forward a method for the formulation of an effective field theory for shell model using the harmonic oscillator basis as a regulator.