Wendell Meredith Stanley (August 16, 1904 – June 15, 1971) was an American biochemist, virologist and Nobel laureate.

Although a member of National Research Council, he moved to Munich for temporarily academic work with Heinrich Wieland before he returned to the United States in 1931.

[3] Stanley was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1940 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1941.

Most of the conclusions Stanley had presented in his Nobel-winning research were soon shown to be incorrect (in particular, that the crystals of mosaic virus he had isolated were pure protein, and assembled by autocatalysis).

[8][9] Stanley married Marian Staples (1905–1984) in 1929 and had three daughters (Marjorie, Dorothy and Janet) and a son (Wendell Meredith Junior).