Carl Wilhelm Scheele (9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) is a German-Swedish pharmaceutical chemist.

Isaac Asimov will later call 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.