Wendell Stanley. Portrait of US biochemist and Nobel Laureate, Wendell Meredith Stanley (1904- 1971), seen in a tobacco plant laboratory. Born in Ridgeville, Indiana, he received his education from Illinois University. In 1931 he joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in Princeton; in 1948 he became Director of the Virus Laboratory at the University of California. Stanley first isolated the tobacco mosaic virus, and in 1936 he showed that it contains protein and nucleic acid. He then characterised the physical and chemical properties of the virus. In 1949 he noted that viruses can cause cancer. Stanley shared the 1946 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.