Wendell M. Stanley

Facts

Wendell Meredith Stanley

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Wendell Meredith Stanley
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1946

Born: 16 August 1904, Ridgeville, IN, USA

Died: 15 June 1971, Salamanca, Spain

Affiliation at the time of the award: Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Princeton, NJ, USA

Prize motivation: “for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form”

Prize share: 1/4

Work

Many infectious diseases are caused by viruses—very small biological particles. They are far too small to be visible under a microscope and could only be identified with the help of the symptoms they cause. Wendell Stanley studied the tobacco mosaic virus, which attacks the leaves of tobacco plants. From considerable quantities of infected tobacco leaves, he succeeded in extracting the virus in the form of pure crystals in 1935. Through further research, Stanley was able to show that the tobacco mosaic virus is composed of protein and ribonucleic acid, or RNA.

To cite this section
MLA style: Wendell M. Stanley – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Mon. 2 Oct 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1946/stanley/facts/>

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