Abstract
WITH the death of Edward Perceval Wright one of the links connecting the old school of naturalists with the modern students of biology is severed. Wright was born in Dublin in 1834, where his father was a barrister. He early evinced a keen interest in natural history, and his enthusiasm in forwarding its study led him to commence to publish, in 1854, the year after his matriculation in Dublin University, a quarterly journal devoted to natural science. It was called the Natural History Review, and its publication was continued until 1866. In this journal, in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, the Journal of Botany, and in the British Association Reports, he published during the next twelve years a series of papers on the fauna of the south and west coasts of Ireland. His undergraduate studies in botany were pursued under the guidance of Prof. G. J. Allman, and as a student he came into contact with W. H. Harvey, who was then keeper of the Herbarium in Trinity College, and of whom Wright always spoke with the warmest appreciation. In 1858 Wright was appointed lecturer in zoology and director of the Natural History Museum of Trinity College. About the same time he was appointed lecturer in botany in the medical school attached to Dr. Steevens's Hospital. It is surprising to find that while he was thus engaged actively in research and teaching, he also found time to prosecute medical studies with such success that by 1865 he had begun to establish a position for himself among Dublin oculists. But he did not remain in practice long, and, finding it impossible to pursue his medical work together with his duties as locum tenens in the chair of botany during the illness of Harvey, who was then the University professor, Wright definitely gave up his ophthalmological work in 1866. During the same period his attention was directed to the finds of fossils in the Kilkenny Coal-measures, and in 1866 he published, in collaboration with T. H. Huxley, an account of the fossil vertebrata from the Jarrow colliery.
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Dr. E. Perceval Wright . Nature 83, 73–74 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/083073a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/083073a0