James A. (Jim) Piper (born c. 1949) is a New Zealand/Australian physicist, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and Professor of Physics at Macquarie University. Piper studied physics at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and received a B.Sc. (Hons) in 1968. He completed a Ph.D. in atomic physics, also at Otago, in 1971. His post-doctoral research was on metal-vapour lasers, with Colin Webb at Oxford.