John Charles Fields was a Canadian mathematician who was best known as the founder of the Fields Medal. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario on May 14, 1863 and died on August 9, 1932.

Fields graduated from Hamilton Collegiate Institute in 1880 and the University of Toronto in 1884, then studied at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Fields received his Ph.D. in 1887 with the thesis Symbolic Finite Solutions and Solutions by Definite Integrals of the Equation . He returned to Canada in 1902 to lecture at the University of Toronto.

Fields was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1907 and fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1913.