William Wright (botanist)

William Wright (1735 to 1819) was a Scottish physician and botanist, born in Crieff, Perthshire, who trained as an apprentice physician and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh before serving as a naval surgeon in the West Indies. He took his MD at St Andrews in 1763 and practised in Jamaica, where he was appointed Surgeon General in 1774 and Physician in Chief of the colony in 1783. His Jamaican plant collections made him a recognised botanist, and he described more than 750 plant species. He was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783, became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1778 and presided over the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1801. The record also states that he owned enslaved people on his Jamaican estate and opposed the abolition of slavery. He died in Edinburgh in 1819.