Robert J. Kolenkow is an American physicist. He is best known for being the coauthor, along with Daniel Kleppner, of a popular undergraduate physics textbook.
Kolenkow did his undergraduate work at MIT, graduating in 1955. For a time, he was an associate professor of physics at MIT. His departure in 1971 generated some controversy on campus; he was regarded as an excellent teacher by his students, however, the administration was viewed as being more concerned about research than education when making its tenure decisions.