Frederick Eugene Wright

Frederick Eugene Wright ( born October 16, 1877 in Marquette, Michigan; † August 25, 1953 in Sagastaweka, Canada) was an American mineralogist, geophysicists and optics specialist.

Wright, whose father Charles Wright geologist in the state service (he died in 1888 ), went with his mother and brother in 1895 to Germany, went to Weimar to high school and studied at the University of Heidelberg, where he studied with Harry Rosenbusch and Viktor Moritz Goldschmidt and in 1900 a PhD (summa cum laude). After his return he taught for two years at the Michigan College of Mines, Houghton, and then went to the U.S. Geological Survey. Then he charted three years in Alaska, where he was particularly explore coal deposits. He was accompanied by his brother as an assistant. In 1906 he went to the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, where he remained for the rest of his career until his retirement in 1944. In the summer months 1907/8 he continued geological investigations of his father and his own earlier research in Michigan, which he published in 1908.

At the Geophysical Laboratory, he dealt first with the effect of temperature increase on the crystal structure of quartz ( Quartz as a geologic thermometer, with Esper S. Larsen ) and was an early advocate of the benefits of microscopy in petrography in the U.S. and continued to develop its technology. For example, he introduced the immersion method at the Geophysical Laboratory. He turned microscopic techniques also on applied problems, for example in the study of Portland cement. For the company Tiffany, he developed a test device, the real gems of artificial difference. In 1929, he developed a portable gravimeter for field measurements ( in the development, he was employed since 1922). In 1928 he undertook gravity measurements made ​​in collaboration with Felix Andries Vening - Meinesz by a U- boat in the Caribbean.

In 1928, he was to field studies with Reginald A. Daly and Molengraaff and Charles Palache in South Africa, where he particularly examined the current plateau basalts. The study of basalt Trapps he then continued on the Columbia River in the U.S. continues.

He dealt with the military use of optical glass and coordinated its production in the United States in the First World War, which he himself had to do development work is also in the Second World War, he was called in as optics expert from the U.S. government. For his services he received the Army Gold Medal in 1945. Later on, he dealt with the surface of the moon, which he studied the properties of the reflected light, for example, with the telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory ( from 1928 to the early 1940s ). He was in the U.S. at that time as one of the leading experts on the moon.

Wright was president of the Optical Society of America in 1941 and president of the Mineralogical Society of America and vice-president of the Geological Society of America. He was since 1950 Honorary Member of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, since 1923 Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences was (the Home Secretary he was twenty years from 1931 to 1951 and from 1927 to 1931 as Vice- President), the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 1951 his doctoral degree was renewed in Heidelberg. In 1952 he was awarded the Roebling Medal.

He was married in 1909 and had three sons and a daughter.

Writings

• The methods of petrographic - microscopic research: their relative accuracy and range of application, 1911