Thomas Wright

Thomas Wright was a Scottish surgeon and palaeontologist born November 9, 1809, in Paisley, Scotland, who died November 17, 1884, and who studied medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, earned his M.D. from St Andrews University in 1846, and relocated that year to Cheltenham, England, where he served as medical officer of health and surgeon at Cheltenham General Hospital. He specialized in fossil echinoderms of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, publishing a Monograph on the Lias Ammonites of the British Isles and further monographs on British fossil echinoderms, and part of his fossil collection was acquired by the British Museum after his death. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1855, a Fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1859, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1879, served as president of the Midland Union of Natural History Societies in the early 1880s, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1878.