English biochemist and corecipient, with Hans von Euler-Chelpin (Euler-Chelpin, Hans von), of the 1929 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work on the fermentation of sugar and the enzyme action involved.

After studies at Manchester and at Erlangen, Germany, Harden became a lecturer-demonstrator at the University of Manchester (1888–97). He took charge of the chemical and water laboratory at the Jenner Institute of Preventive Medicine and from 1907 to 1930 headed the biochemistry department. He became a professor of biochemistry at the University of London in 1912.

His more than 20 years of study of the fermentation of sugar advanced knowledge of intermediary metabolic processes in all living forms. He also pioneered in studies of bacterial enzymes and metabolism. He wrote Alcoholic Fermentation (1911), was coauthor, with H.E. Roscoe, of A New View of the Origin of Dalton's Atomic Theory (1896), and served as joint editor of The Biochemical Journal (1913–37). He was knighted in 1936.