Orville Wyss

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Orville Wyss (1912–1993) was an American microbiologist. He served as president of the American Society for Microbiology in 1965. He earned his B.S. (1937), M.S. (1938), and Ph.D. (1941) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison; his Ph.D. studied how nitrogen is fixed by bacteria.

From 1941 to 1945 he worked as a research bacteriologist for Wallace & Tiernan Products. In 1945 he joined the University of Texas at Austin as an associate professor, became a full professor in 1948, and stayed there until 1983, retiring as professor emeritus. He led the microbiology department from 1959 to 1969 and again from 1975 to 1976. He supervised about 70 Ph.D. students, ten of whom later became department chairs.

While at Wallace & Tiernan he helped develop Desenex. His research covered bacterial nitrogen fixation and the physiology and genetics of bacteria. He spent 1962–1963 at McMurdo Station as a biologist for the U.S. Antarctic Research Program. He was elected a Fellow of the AAAS in 1953. Mount Wyss was named in his honor in 1967. He was a Fulbright fellow in 1971 (Australia) and in 1978 (Nepal). He married Margaret Bess Bedell in 1941, and they had three daughters.