His research focused on the mutagenic effects of different forms of radiation on economically important plants like maize and barley.

[1] Stadler's early education efforts were unremarkable, but two summers worked on Midwestern farms sparked an interest in agriculture.

Post-A.M., he enrolled in the Field Artillery of the United States Army, although his commission as Second Lieutenant was not used in overseas duty due to the end of World War I. Stadler spent 1919 in graduate studies at Cornell University under Harry Houser Love and Rollins A.

Stadler remained at Missouri until 1954 and acted as a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology (1940), and Yale University (1950).

In 1925, he won a National Research Council Fellowship in Biology for a study in variation in linkage values in maize.