James Hamish Hamilton (15 November 1900 – 24 May 1988) was a half-American, half-Scottish rower who competed for Great Britain in the 1928 Summer Olympics. He founded the publishing house Hamish Hamilton Limited.

Hamilton was born in Indianapolis to a Scottish father, James Hamilton, and an American mother, Alice van Valkenburg, but was brought up mostly by relatives in Scotland. Brought up by relations in Scotland, he was sent to Rugby and Cambridge, where he briefly studied medicine before reading French, Spanish and Law. As a young man he gained much prowess as a diving and skiing champion besides being a redoubtable wet bob (he coxed the England eight at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics), and he remained an enthusiastic member of the Leander Club throughout his life. Nobody, however, less typified ‘Leanderthal Man’ (to borrow a phrase coined by a former president of this Society), for Jamie had neat hands and a good many intellectual interests.

Hamilton studied law and language at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before attracting attention as an oarsman with Thames Rowing Club. He was a member of the Thames Eight, which won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta in 1927. The Thames Eight, including Hamilton, won the Grand Challenge Cup again in 1928 and was chosen to represent Great Britain rowing at the 1928 Summer Olympics, where they won a silver medal. He married Jean Forbes-Robertson in 1929, but the marriage ended in 1933.

Hamilton was an employee of the book department at Harrod's before founding his own publishing house, Hamish Hamilton, in the 1930s. He went on to publish a large number of promising British and American authors, many of whom were personal friends and acquaintances of Jamie Hamilton. Jamie Hamilton sold the firm to the Thomson Organisation in 1965, who resold it to Penguin Books in 1986,

(Hamish comes from the Gaelic form, James the English form – which was also his given name, and Jamie the diminutive form). Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton.