Edward Egelman is a biophysicist known for his work on the structure and function of protein and nucleoprotein polymers. He developed the algorithm that is now widely used in cryo-electron microscopy for the three-dimensional reconstruction of helical filaments and tubes. His research has ranged from studies of actin to bacterial pili to viruses that infect hosts living in nearly boiling acid.

Egelman graduated from Brandeis University in 1976 with a BSc in Physics. He started as a PhD student in experimental high energy physics at Harvard but changed fields and received his PhD from Brandeis University in 1982 in biophysics. He was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and became an Assistant Professor at Yale University in 1984. In 1989 he moved to the University of Minnesota where he was an Associate and Full Professor, and in 1999 moved to the University of Virginia where he is now a Harrison Distinguished Professor. He has been president of the Biophysical Society and Editor-in-Chief of Biophysical Journal, and is a Fellow of the Biophysical Society, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2019 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.