STANLEY Wendell Meredith

Stanley, Wendell Meredith (Stanley, Wendell Meredith), 1860-1917), American chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1946, (with D. Sumner and D. Northrop) 'for the preparation of pure enzymes and virus proteins'.
Born August 16, 1904 in Ridzhville (Indiana) in the family of a local newspaper publisher, James J. Stanley and Claire Plessindzher. As a schoolboy, helped his parents by selling newspapers and working in the editorial. After completing secondary school in Ridzhville entered Erlem College in Richmond (Indiana), where he studied chemistry and mathematics.

Stanley was the captain of the football team and was going to become a football coach. Shortly before the end Erlem College, visited the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. The visit has attracted interest in research, and this led him to graduate from this university, where in 1927 he received a master's degree, and in 1929 he defended his thesis on compounds for the treatment of leprosy.

A year later he was awarded a scholarship of the National Research Council to work with Wieland (Heinrich Wieland, Nobel Prize, 1927), University of Munich. Upon his return the next year in the U.S. Stanley became an assistant at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) in New York, . but in 1932 moved to the Institute's laboratory of pathology of animals and plants in Princeton (New Jersey),
. Here he began studying the viruses that cause disease in plants.

Viruses were discovered in 1892 by Russian scientist Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovski (1864-1920). Seven years later the Netherlands botanist and microbiologist William Martin Beyerink (Martin Willem Beyerinck, . 1851-1931) reported, . that the tobacco mosaic - a type of plant diseases - called the vehicle of infection is much smaller, . than the smallest bacteria, . so tiny, . that it can not be seen under the microscope,
. It is known that viruses are able to reproduce itself and, indeed, must be living organisms.

Stanley was first obtained crystals of tobacco mosaic virus. By exposing the virus to the action of enzymes trypsin and pepsin, as well as more than a hundred chemicals, in 1934 he came to the conclusion that tobacco mosaic virus consists mainly of protein and, consequently, it can be crystallized. He managed. Of the tons of virus infected tobacco leaves, he singled out a few grams of fine needle-like crystals. Moreover, it was found that crystals of the virus may be dissolved, filtered, cleaned and re-crystallized, without destroying their ability to multiply in plants and infect them.

The following year he singled out from the crystalline tobacco mosaic virus nucleic acid, and in 1937 it was found that the tobacco mosaic virus is a nucleoprotein (compound of nucleic acids and proteins).

During the Second World War, Stanley served on the Committee for Medical Research of the Research Management. He and his colleagues have several strains of influenza virus and the first flu vaccine, for which Stanley was awarded the Honorary Diploma of the President (1948).

In 1946, Stanley and D. Northrop was awarded half the Nobel Prize 'for the preparation of pure enzymes and virus proteins'. The other half of the prize was awarded to D. Sumner. In his Nobel lecture Stanley said, . that since the opening of the tobacco mosaic virus was found more than 300 different viruses, . including those, . that cause smallpox, . yellow fever, . dengue, . Polio, . measles, . mumps, . pneumonia and common cold,
. 'Some basic ... issues that relate to how the reproduction and mutation of the virus, have already acquired some form of. Their decision could provide extremely valuable information for biology, chemistry, genetics and medicine '.

In 1948, Stanley headed a laboratory for studying viruses in the University of California at Berkeley, where he remained until the end of his scientific activity. Supervised research aimed at further clarifying the nature of viruses, have deciphered the entire sequence of 158 amino acids in tobacco mosaic virus, identified and examined polio virus (1955). He is rightly considered the father of modern virology.

That in viruses Stanley saw the cause of many types of human cancer, is also assumed that viruses were the first form of life on Earth. These views he outlined in his books "Viruses" (1959) and "Viruses and the nature of life" (1961).

In addition to the research and administrative work, Stanley was carrying a large teaching load, met in numerous boards and committees. From 1945 until his death - Advisor to the National Institutes of Health, . member of the group of experts and consultants of the Commission on viral diseases at the World Health Organization (1951-1966), . National Council on Cancer NHS USA (1952-1956), . National Scientific Committee on Health Research (1955), . group of scientific advisers to the National Cancer Institute (1957-1958) and advisory committee under the Ministry of Health, . Education and Welfare United States (1967-1968),

. Works: Viruses and Cancer
. - Under. red. LA Zilber and AA Smorodintseva. , 1958; Viruses and the nature of life. - Under. red. Acad. Engelhardt. Moscow, 1963 (with E. Velensom); The isolation of crystalline tobacco mosaic virus protein from diseased tomato plants / / Science. 1936. V. 83. N. 2143. P. 85 (with H. S. Loring).

He died of a heart attack on April 15, 1971 in the city of Salamanca (Spain).