Roger Frederick Dashen (May 5, 1938 in Grand Junction, Colorado – May 25, 1995 in La Jolla) was an American theoretical physicist who studied particle physics and quantum field theory. Dashen studied physics at the Harvard University (where he also played in the football team), where he graduated "summa cum laude" in 1960. Then he went to Caltech, where he earned his PhD in 1964. After that, he was a professor at Caltech in 1967 and the Institute for Advanced Study in 1969. In 1986, he became a professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1988 was Head of Faculty. He played a leading role in the establishment of a supercomputer center at UCSD and in the establishment of the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the National Science Foundation at the University of Californi