Barry Smith (June 4, 1952) is an American philosopher. He holds the title of Julian Park Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo and is a research fellow at the New York State Research Scientist. From 2002 to 2006 he was director of the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science in Leipzig and Saarbrücken, Germany.

His research focuses on ontology and its applications, particularly in biomedicine and biomedical informatics, disciplines in which he has worked on a variety of projects related to biomedical terminology and electronic archiving of patient data.

He is the author of some 450 scientific publications, including 15 books, and is editor of The Monist: An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry. In 2002 he received the Wolfgang Paul Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in recognition of his scientific achievements. He is also the coordinator of The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies.

In turn, Barry Smith has been a visiting professor at the University of Italian Switzerland since 2019.