Harold Franklin Heady (29 March 1916, Buhl, Idaho, March 29, 1916 – 28 April 2011, La Grande, Oregon) was an American forester, botanist, prairie ecologist, and expert on range management. Heady received in 1938 a B.S. from the University of Idaho and in 1940 an M.S. from the New York State College of Forestry in Syracuse. In 1942 he accepted a job teaching range management at Montana State University. Heady earned in 1949 a Ph.D. in plant ecology at the University of Nebraska under the prairie ecologist John Ernest Weaver and was, while working on his doctoral dissertation, on the faculty of Montana State University and then Texas A&M University.