Carl Wilhelm Scheele (9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) was a German-Swedish pharmaceutical chemist. Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" because he made a number of chemical discoveries before others who are generally given the credit. For example, Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hydrogen, and chlorine before Humphry Davy, among others.

Scheele was born in Stralsund, Swedish Pomerania. Scheele's father Joachim Christian Scheele, was a merchant of a respected German family. At fourteen, he was sent as an apprentice pharmacist in Gothenburg with Martin Andreas Bauch. He retained this position for eight years before becoming an apothecary's clerk in Malmö. Then Scheele worked as a pharmacist in Stockholm, from 1770-1775 in Uppsala, and later in Köping.

Scheele preferred speaking German his whole life, and German was commonly spoken among Swedish pharmacists.