Maurice Cranston (1920–1993) was an English academic, biographer, and intellectual historian. For many years he was a professor of political science at the London School of Economics. He was also a professor of political theory at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

Cranston’s major works include biographies of John Locke, for which he received the 1957 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and Rousseau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others.