James R. Wright, Jr. was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. He received his B.S. in Zoology, M.D., M.A. in the History of Medicine, and Ph.D. in Experimental Pathology from The Ohio State University. Dr. Wright completed his residency in Anatomical Pathology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and trained there as a post-doctoral fellow in the islet transplant laboratory.
A fellowship in pediatric and perinatal pathology at the IWK Children’s Hospital and Grace Maternity Hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, lead him to continue his career in Canada. He stayed and eventually served as Professor of Pathology, Surgery, and Bio-Medical Engineering at Dalhousie University. Dr Wright relocated to Calgary, Alberta, as academic department head for Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Calgary, and as clinical department head for the Calgary Health Region in 2005. He retired in 2022 and maintains emeritus status.
Dr Wright published extensively in the fields of pathology, medical history, and numerous other topics. In the area of medical history, his publications relate to the history of pathology, the history of insulin, or Sir William Osler. As a medical student at Ohio State, he received the American Association for the History of Medicine’s William Osler Medal in 1984. In 2019 Dr. Wright endowed a lecture series at the Medical Heritage Center. The first Wright Lecture was held in 2021. From 2024-2025 Dr. Wright was the first vice president of the American Osler Society; he was installed as the president in 2025. Additionally, he obtained a patent in 2000 for a method of harvesting islet cells from transgenic fish and a patent in 2002 for a transgenic tilapia comprising a humanized insulin gene.
The James R. Wright, Jr., MD, PhD Papers (15 MB, 8 files) contains papers documenting his career and historical research. There are curriculum vitae and a brief biography for Dr. Wright dating from 2016, 2020 and 2026. The biographical information is accompanied by editions of The Oslerian, A Publication of The American Osler Society dating from 2025 and 2026 that contain presidential messages from Dr. Wright. Additionally, there is an article by Dr. Wright about the history of SIDS and a PDF of scanned historical documents documenting the case of Dr. Jacob Werne and Dr. Irene Garrow Werne.
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[Identification of item], James R. Wright, Jr., MD, PhD, SPEC.202602.WRIGHT, Medical Heritage Center, Health Sciences Library, The Ohio State University.