Edzard Ernst is a retired British-German academic physician and researcher who specializes in the study of complementary and alternative medicine. He was the Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, which was the world's first such academic position in this field.

Ernst began his medical career at a homeopathic hospital in Munich, Germany. He served as the chairman of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Vienna, leaving in 1993 to establish the department of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter in England. In 2002, he became the director of complementary medicine at the Peninsula Medical School. Ernst held the Laing chair in Complementary Medicine until his retirement in 2011.

He is the founder of two medical journals: Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies and Perfusion. Ernst wrote a regular column for The Guardian, reviewing news stories about complementary medicine from an evidence-based perspective. He is known for publishing critical research on alternative modalities, earning him the title "the scourge of alternative medicine."

In 2015, Ernst was awarded the John Maddox Prize, sponsored by Sense about Science and Nature, for his courage in standing up for science.