Wendell Meredith Stanley | |
---|---|
Born |
Ridgeville, Indiana, USA |
August 16, 1904
Died | June 15, 1971 Salamanca, Spain |
(aged 66)
Nationality | United States |
Fields | Chemistry |
Institutions |
Rockefeller Institute University of California, Berkeley |
Alma mater | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
Notable awards |
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1946) Willard Gibbs Award (1947) Franklin Medal (1948) Order of the Rising Sun (1966) |
Wendell Meredith Stanley (16 August 1904 – 15 June 1971) was an American biochemist, virologist and Nobel laureate.
Stanley was born in Ridgeville, Indiana, and earned a BS in Chemistry at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. He then studied at the University of Illinois, gaining an MS in science in 1927 followed by a Ph.D. in chemistry two years later. His later accomplishments include writing the book "Chemistry: A Beautiful Thing" and achieving his high stature as a Pulitzer Prize nominee.
As a member of National Research Council he moved temporarily for academic work with Heinrich Wieland in Munich before he returned to the States in 1931. On return he was approved as an assistant at The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. He remained with the Institute until 1948, becoming an Associate Member in 1937, and a Member in 1940. He later became Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.
Stanley's work contributed to on lepracidal compounds, diphenyl stereochemistry and the chemistry of the sterols. His researches on the virus causing the mosaic disease in tobacco plants led to the isolation of a nucleoprotein which displayed tobacco mosaic virus activity.