William Morton Wheeler (March 19, 1865 – April 19, 1937) was an American entomologist, myrmecologist and professor at Harvard University.

[3] Wheeler attended public school, but, due to "persistently bad behavior", he was transferred to a local German academy which was known for its extreme discipline.

This was to persuade the city fathers to purchase them and combine them with the present collection at the academy, in which it would lay the foundation for a free municipal museum of natural history.

[5] Wheeler, who had familiarized himself with the museum since childhood, volunteered to spend the nights in helping to unpack and install the specimens.

[4][5] He was later made a foreman and spent most of his time identifying and arranging the collection of shells, echinoderms, and sponges, as well as preparing catalogues and price lists of these specimens for publication.

[4] Wheeler collaborated with some of Peckham's published papers by illustrating the palpi and epigynes of spiders, and by assisting him and his wife with their field work on wasps.

[4] He left Milwaukee after leaving the museum to assist Whitman at Clark University, and, by 1892, secured a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was "Contribution to Insect Embryology".

This began an influx of young students, both who were pupils and scientific associates, to study and research for long periods of time under his guidance.

Donisthorpe and Wheeler also frequently exchanged specimens, leading the latter to first develop the idea that the Formicinae subfamily had its origins in North America.

[16] For his work, Ants of the American Museum Congo Expedition, Wheeler was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1922.

Wheeler led the Harvard Australian Expedition (1931–1932) on behalf of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, a six-man venture sent for the dual purpose of procuring specimens - the museum being "weak in Australian animals and...desires[ing] to complete its series" - and to engage in "the study of the animals of the region when alive.