John Baumgardner

John R. Baumgardner is a geophysicist, young earth creationist, intelligent design supporter and Christian.

Baumgardner earned a B.S. from Texas Tech University in 1968, a M.S. from Princeton University in 1970, and a Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1983. He worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and in 2002 joined the staff of the Institute for Creation Research. As a professional scientist, Baumgardner is known for numerical simulation of mantle convection and plate tectonics.

Baumgardner is a Christian who sometimes pursues pseudoscientific creationist research. He has, for example, created a computer simulation called Terra to model the Noachian flood. In 1985, Baumgardner joined the controversial amateur archaeologist Ron Wyatt and salvage expert David Fasold to Durupınar, Turkey for an expedition recounted in Fasold's The Ark of Noah to locate the biblical ship's remains. Baumgardner did not support Wyatt and Fasold claims to have found a boat-shaped 'object' which was the Ark. He argued that the object was a natural formation. In 1997, US News and World Report described him as "the world's pre-eminent expert in the design of computer models for geophysical convection".