Whitall Nicholson Perry (January 19, 1920 - November 18, 2005) was an American author born in Belmont, Massachusetts, member of the Perennialist School, which is based primarily on the work of René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy and Frithjof Schuon.

There he developed close ties with the French metaphysician René Guénon, which led him to join the tariqa of Frithjof Schuon.

[3] The metaphysician and art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy, whom Perry had known while studying at Harvard, had launched the idea of an encyclopedia that would collect wisdom from around the world.

This collection of more than 1,100 pages gathers thousands of quotations from all the great religious and esoteric traditions, supported by commentaries referring largely to the writings of Guénon, Coomaraswamy and Schuon.

[5] Perry has also published some twenty articles in the English journal Studies in Comparative Religion on a variety of metaphysical and religious topics.