Margaret Wright

Margaret Wright

POUGHKEEPSIE - Margaret Ruth Wright was born at home in Rochester, NY, on March 24, 1913. She died on March 29, 2012, after a long stay but a brief illness at the Lutheran Care Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. Those 99 years were full and rich with experiences and with people whom she remembered and cherished until her last day.

At her birth, Margaret joined her parents, Adelbert Frank Wright and Ethal Grace (Potter) Wright, and a brother, Wilson Edward Wright, seven years her senior. She was educated in the Rochester public schools and then at the University of Rochester where she received her Bachelors Degree in 1934 and her Masters Degree in 1938. While at the university, she was taken on as a research assistant by Professor Sherman C. Bishop, an eminent scientist whose primary subjects of study were salamanders and spiders.

In 1936, her association with Professor Bishop led to her appointment as his field assistant on a six-month expedition by automobile that ultimately traversed 20,000 miles of U.S. back roads, all the time searching for new and interesting creatures. Along the way, she captured a salamander that was thus far unknown to science, and because of that feat the species now bears her name.

Margaret went on to earn her PhD from Yale University in 1946. During her first years at Yale, she supported herself by working as the assistant to a histologist in the university's Zoology Department, at 35 cents per hour, and by typing papers for her fellow graduate students. In her last years in residence there (1942-43), she was a paid teaching assistant, the first woman ever to have such a job in the sciences at Yale. By that time, she had become an expert not only in histology but also in embryology, both crucial fields for a person interested in the development of salamanders and other amphibians.

In 1943, before she had completed her doctoral work at Yale, Middlebury College's biology department hired Margaret to teach courses in genetics, embryology, histology, and physiology. She was their first woman instructor in the sciences, just as she had been Yale's first female teaching assistant in the sciences. While at Middlebury, she honed her teaching skills, fell in love with Vermont and, despite a full teaching load, completed her graduate work at Yale. She remained at Middlebury until 1946 when she moved on to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie.

Margaret spent the rest of her career at Vassar. By the time she retired in 1978, she had mastered genetics and evolution and she was deeply into teaching and studying not only invertebrate biology and conservation biology but also the still young science of ecology. Her commitment to her students, her keen mind and stern insistence on high academic standards, and her kindness, all earned her the devotion of a large number of Vassar's biology undergraduates; many of them kept in touch with her for decades after they graduated.

One of Margaret's most significant contributions to Vassar and the surrounding community was her stewardship of Vassar Farm. Once, these several hundred acres had been a working farm and had provided Vassar with milk, eggs, and other products. But by the mid-1960s, that role had ceased, and it was Margaret who spearheaded the effort to establish a large fraction of the acreage as an ecological preserve. It was primarily she who understood the concept of multiple use that now characterizes the farm itself and the preserve, she who garnered the support that led to an endowment that now supports many of the studies undertaken there, and she who fostered the natural history program that, for more than 25 years now, has educated second and third graders from schools in the region.

For many years following her retirement in 1978, Margaret continued to study and consult with her colleagues in Vassar's biology department. Some of the consultations, especially those concerning conservation, persisted into the current decade, when she was approaching her own century mark. During the same period, she spent as much time as she could travelling, especially with her very good friend, Betty Gardner, and in Vermont at a cabin that she and Betty built and at which they spent many summers.

Margaret outlived most of her dearest friends and all of her close family. A celebration of her life will take place later in the spring at the Ecological Preserve on Vassar Farm.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Parmele, Auchmoody & Schoonmaker Funeral Home, 110 Fulton Ave., Poughkeepsie.

If you would like to sign a guest book for Margaret, please visit www.HudsonValleyFuneralHomes.com