John Whelan Sterling (July 17, 1816 – March 9, 1885) was a pioneer faculty member of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

When the first university chancellor John Hiram Lathrop opened the school in 1849, he and Sterling were the only two professors.

He worked in a law office for a year, and in 1837 entered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) as a sophomore, graduating in 1840.

As Muir put it: With fear and trembling, overladen with ignorance, I called on Professor Stirling [sic], who was then Acting President, presented my case, and told him how far I had got on with my studies at home, and that I hadn't been to school since leaving Scotland at the age of eleven years, excepting one short term of a couple of months at a district school, because I could not be spared from the farm work.

[4] Sterling Hall on the UW campus was named after him in 1921, and is currently the home of the school's astronomy department.

[5] It became infamous for the 1970 Sterling Hall bombing which resulted in the death of a university physics researcher and injuries to three others.