Eldred C. “E.C.” Nelson (1917-2008) was an American physicist.
Not long after arriving at the University of California, Berkeley to study physics, Nelson was recruited by his professor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, to work on the Manhattan Project. He joined the project at Los Alamos, where he served as a group leader within the Theoretical Physics Division.
He left Los Alamos after the war, and spent much of the rest of his life working as a scientist for private companies.