Howard Elson Bigelow (June 28, 1923 – November 21, 1987) was an American mycologist, born in 1923 in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and died in 1987. He was wed to mycologist Margaret Elizabeth Barr-Bigelow in 1956.He studied at Oberlin College from 1941 to 1943. He left college to fight in the American army. He returned to Oberlin after the war and obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1949 and his Master of Arts in 1951. He studied botany at the University of Michigan under the guidance of Alexander Hanchett Smith (1904–1986) and received his doctorate in 1956. Bigelow and his wife worked for University of Massachusetts from 1957 to his death. He is the author of works on the fungi of the genus Clitocybe and the family Tricholomataceae.