Thomas Wright (geologist)

Thomas Wright was a Scottish surgeon and palaeontologist, born in Paisley on 9 November 1809 and educated at Paisley Grammar School. He studied medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in Dublin, returned to Scotland to practise, and took his MD at St Andrews in 1846. That year he moved to Cheltenham, where he served as medical officer of health to the urban district and as a surgeon at Cheltenham General Hospital. In his leisure time he collected Jurassic fossils from the Cotswolds and elsewhere as a member of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Club, and he published papers and monographs on them, including Lias Ammonites of the British Isles and studies of British fossil echinoderms. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1855, won the Wollaston Medal in 1878 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1879. He died on 17 November 1884.