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

His later accomplishments include writing the book "Chemistry: A Beautiful Thing" and being a Pulitzer Prize nominee.

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.

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).