Robert A. Olson (1917–July 20, 1987) was a soil scientist and educator at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and is known to be the first person to prove and warn people of using nitrogen fertilizerers as they might do harm to crops and pollute groundwater. Other then teaching at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Olson was a consultant at the OECD in 1958 and represented International Atomic Energy Agency in 1962. Between 1967 and 1969 he served as a manager of the Food for Hunger Campaign Fertilizer Program for the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Italy and was a director of the Agricultural Division of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. Olson died at the age of 70, after suffering injuries that he got in a car crash.