Wilhelm Verhoeff (25 November 1867 – 6 December 1944) was a German myriapodologist and entomologist, specialising in myriapods (millipedes, centipedes, and related species) as well as woodlice and to a lesser extent insects.

Karl W. Verhoeff was born on 25 November 1867 in Soest in Westphalia, the son of the apothecary Karl M. Verhoeff and his wife Mathilde (born Rocholl).

He completed his Abitur examination in Soest in 1889 and completed his doctoral thesis in zoology in Bonn in 1893.

In 1902 he married Marie Kringer, who died in 1937 during surgery.

The marriage produced three children, two daughters and a son, the son dying in 1942 on the Russian front.

The 1962 compilation of Gisela Mauermayer records 670 scientific works by Verhoeff, including major contributions to the series Klassen und Ordnungen des Tierreichs.

Verhoeff received a number of awards towards the end of his life, including the silver Leibniz Medal of the Prussian Academy of Science (1933), the Preis & Plakette of the August Forel foundation (1942) and a Doktor Diplom from the University of Bonn on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his thesis (1943).

In 1942, shortly before his 75th birthday, he was elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

He died in Munich from wounds sustained during an air-raid on 6 December 1944.Verhoeff's botanical writing concerned plant-insect interactions.