Claud William Wright
Claud William Wright , often quoted by CW Wright , called Willy Wright , (born January 9, 1917 in Ellenborough , Yorkshire , † February 15, 2010 in Burford , Oxfordshire ) was a British paleontologist, formally an amateur . His main occupation was a senior British civil servant.
Wright, whose father was chairman of British Oil and Cake Mills, grew up in North Ferriby near Hull on the banks of the Humber , where he was collecting ammonites as a teenager. He and his brother also found three ships from the Bronze Age on the banks of the Humber, one of which is now in the National Maritime Museum. He studied at Charterhouse College in Surrey and from 1936 Christ Church College, University of Oxford , graduating in 1939. There he also heard from the paleontologist William Joscelyn Arkell , an authority on fossils of the Jurassic, but also acted as a student of Latin and ancient Greek emerged. Arkell also brought Wright and his brother to work on the Geological Survey report of the Weymouth , Swanage , Corfe Castle and Lulworth area .
His main occupation was from 1939 a civil servant in the War Office, after an examination that sifted out 50 out of 1,000 candidates. During the Second World War he volunteered and became an officer in the King's Royal Rifles, but in this role he was posted to the War Office again - he made it up to major. After the war he continued his career in the Ministry of Defense, from 1961 to 1968 as Assistant Under-Secretary of State and in 1968 as Deputy Under-Secretary in 1971. He was then Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Science until his retirement in 1976. He was there involved in the establishment of the Ministry of Arts, where he worked directly with Margaret Thatcher . From 1977 to 1983 he was a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and only then devoted himself fully to research.
He was married to Alison Readman (died 2003), who was also a War Office clerk and a senior electoral researcher, since 1947, and had a son and four daughters. In 1969 he became a CB (Companion of the Order of the Bath). He was an honorary doctor from Hull and Uppsala. In 1961 he received the Stamford Raffles Prize of the Zoological Society of London , in 1958 the RH Worth Prize of the Geological Society of London , in 1987 their Prestwich Medal and in 1947 their Lyell Fund, and in 1989 the Strimple Award of the Paleontological Society .
From 1956 to 1958 he was President of the Geologists Association. He was an Honorary Associate of the British Museum .
He had his first publication on fossils with his brother as a schoolboy in 1932 and by 1939 he had already published 20 articles. His collection (around 25,500 copies) went to the Natural History Museum and the Wright Library of the Oxford University Museum. He also collected Chinese porcelain, but the collection was stolen from him.
He was one of the authors of the Ammonite Volume of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology . He also dealt with fossil crabs from the Cretaceous period and starfish.
When asked how he found the time for his work as a collector and scientist, he replied that these were his oases of normality in a crazy world ( Island of Sanity in a mad world ), especially when dealing with politicians.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wright, Claud William |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wright, CW; Wright, Willy |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British paleontologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 9, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ellenborough , Yorkshire |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 15, 2010 |
| Place of death | Burford , Oxfordshire |