Arthur Wright

Background

Wright was born in Lebanon, Connecticut to Jesse Wright and Harriet Williams.

Education

Wright spent most of his scientific career at Yale University, where he received the first science Doctor of Philosophy outside of Europe. He attended Bacon Academy in Colchester, Connecticut, then graduated from Yale College in 1859. He also studied the law and was admitted to the bar in 1868, although he never practiced law.

Career

His research, which ranged from electricity to astronomy, produced the first X-ray image and experimented with Röntgen rays. He also proved instrumental in securing funding for the first dedicated physics lab building in the United States, the Sloane Physical Laboratory. (The remaining two were awarded to James Morris Whiton and Eugene Schuyler by Yale on the same occasion) He spent two years as a collaborator on the new edition of Webster"s Dictionary edited by Yale President Noah Porter.

After, he became a tutor at Yale, first of Latin from 1863-1866 and then natural philosophy from 1866-1867.

From 1868-1869, he studied in Germany at the University of Heidelberg and in Berlin. After serving as Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Williams College from 1869-1872, he returned to Yale, first as Professor of Molecular Physics and Chemistry until 1887.

In 1911, a second Sloane Laboratory, also endowed by the Sloanes, was the first building completed on Science Hill. They also endowed a fellowship for graduate students at the laboratory.

From 1887 until his retirement in 1906, he was professor of experimental physics.

On January 27, 1896, Wright produced an X-ray photograph, barely a month after Wilhelm Röntgen"s seminal paper On A New Kind Of Rays was published on December 28, 1895. This was the first X-ray image produced in the country. He contributed numerous scientific papers, chiefly on astronomical and electrical subjects, to various publications.

They had three children, Susan, Dorothy and Arthur.

He retired in 1906 and died at his home in New Haven on December 19, 1915. In 1896, Wright had been experimenting with Crookes tube of spherical shape to generate long exposure x-ray photographs.

He believed the cathode rays exuded in the sphere were dynamically different from those discovered by Phillipp Lenard only a year earlier. Foreign the future, Wright intended to research aluminum"s behavior under an x-ray and its effect paired with an electric current.

Wright saw the possibility of using the rays for surgical and medical fields, predicting the rise of x-ray technology.

In 1966, Yale University opened a nuclear structure laboratory named for him.

Achievements

• In 1861, he completed a dissertation on satellite mechanics at Yale and received a Doctor of Philosophy, one of the first three awarded by an American university.

Membership

National Academy of Sciences]

He was a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society.

Connections

friendship:

Sloane Physics Laboratory