[1] Stanley Reginald John Woodell was born in Shepherd's Bush, London.
An undergraduate at Hatfield College, Woodell was a member of the Durham University Exploration Society.
[2] He studied the pollination biology of the genus Primula for his PhD at the same university.
Woodell was a King George VI Fellow at North Carolina State University (1956–57).
A black poplar tree (Populus nigra) was planted at Wolfson College on 22 November 2004 in his memory.