Ernest Nagel (born November 16, 1901 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, died September 22, 1985 in New York City) was the preeminent philosopher of science of his time.

Nagel emigrated to the United States at the age of 10. Nagel received a BS from New York's City College in 1923, and he earned his PhD. from Columbia University in 1930. He taught for one year (1966-1967) at Rockefeller University, but otherwise spent the rest of his academic career at Columbia University, where, in 1967, he became a University Professor.

His masterpiece, The Structure of Science, published in 1961, practically inaugurated the field of analytic philosophy of science. He invented the idea that, by stating analytic equivalencies (or "bridge laws") between the terms of different sciences, one reduced ontological commitment to the entities postulated by the more basic science. Alongside Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, he remains one of the most enduring figures of the logical positivist school. Nagel also served as an editor of the Journal of Philosophy (1939-1956) and of the Journal of Symbolic Logic (1940-1946).

In 1958 he published with James R. Newman Gödel's proof, a celebrated monography about Godel's celebrated paper.