The American virologist Wendell Meredith Stanley (1904-1971) convinced the world that viruses are physicochemically definable particles showing some properties of living material.

On Aug. 16, 1904, W. M. Stanley was born in Ridgeville, Ind. At the age of 16 he entered Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., where he majored in chemistry and mathematics and excelled in football. Upon graduating, he considered a career as an athletic coach. A visit to the University of Illinois at Urbana in connection with his contemplated football career culminated in a fortuitous interview with Roger Adams, professor of chemistry. Three years of graduate work under Professor Adams followed.

After graduating, Stanley married a collaborator, Marian Jay, and they spent a year at the University of Munich. In 1931 he joined the Rockefeller Institute in New York City. The following year he transferred to its newly established laboratory of plant pathology at Princeton, N.J., where he did...