Wendell Meredith StanleyDied 15 Jun 1971 at age 66 (born 16 Aug 1904).American biochemist who in 1946 received (with John Northrop and James Sumner) the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work in the purification and crystallization of viruses, thus demonstrating their molecular structure. Impressed by John Northrop's success in crystallizing proteins, Stanley applied those techniques to his extracts of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). By 1935, he had obtained thin rodlike crystals of the virus and demonstrated that TMV still retained its infectivity after crystallization, the first such purification of a virus. At first, some scientists were skeptical - thinking that viruses, being similar to conventional living organisms could not exist in crystalline form. Stanley then believed, incorrectly, that protein was the active agent of the virus. During WW II, he worked on isolating the influenza virus and prepared a vaccine against it. By 1936 he isolated nucleic acids from the tobacco mosaic virus, which were later found (1955) to cause the viral activity. |
