Robert Hare (January 17, 1781 - May 15, 1858) was an American chemist. He developed and experimented with the oxyhydrogen blowpipe, with Edward Daniel Clarke of Oxford, shortly after 1800. He was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania between 1810 and 1812 and between 1818 and 1847. By the 1820s, Hare had developed the galvanic deflagrator, a type of voltaic battery having large plates used for producing rapid and powerful combustion. In 1854, Hare converted to Spiritualism and wrote several books that made him very famous in the United States as a Spiritualist. He was a prolific writer, writing about hundred and fifty articles in the American Journal of Science. He died in 1858 at the age of 77.