Sir William Robert Wills Wilde FRCSI (March 1815 – 19 April 1876) was an Irish oto-ophthalmologic surgeon and the author of significant works on medicine, archaeology and folklore, particularly concerning his native Ireland.

In 1832, Wilde was bound as an apprentice to Abraham Colles, the pre-eminent Irish surgeon of the day, at Dr Steevens' Hospital in Dublin.

Wilde also studied at the private and highly respected school of anatomy, medicine, and surgery in Park Street (later Lincoln Place), Dublin.

In the same year, Wilde embarked on an eight-month cruise to the Holy Land with a recovering patient, visiting various cities and islands throughout the Mediterranean.

Wilde had a very successful medical practice and was assisted in it by his natural son, Henry Wilson, who had been trained in Dublin, Vienna, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Paris.

Wilson's presence enabled Wilde to travel and he visited Scandinavia, where he received an honorary degree from Uppsala, and was welcomed in Stockholm by Anders Retzius, among others.

Wilde's reputation suffered when Mary Travers, a long-term patient of his and the daughter of a colleague, claimed that he had raped her two years earlier.

The case was the talk of all Dublin, and Wilde's refusal to enter the witness box during the trial was widely held against him as ungentlemanly behaviour.

From this time onwards, Wilde began to withdraw from Dublin to the west of Ireland, where he had started in 1864 to build what became Moytura, his house overlooking Lough Corrib in Connemara, County Galway.