On Feb. 5, 1896, Dr. Arthur Williams Wright of Yale University is credited with producing some of the earliest X-rays in the United States, shortly after their discovery by Wilhelm Röntgen, just a year earlier.

Wright, for whom the Yale Wright Laboratory is named, held the first Ph.D. in science awarded in the Americas. His doctoral dissertation–on satellite mechanics–was one of three accepted by Yale University for the degree in 1861. From 1863 to 1868, Wright taught Latin and then Physics at Yale, returning in 1872 as Professor of Molecular Physics and Chemistry (later changed to Experimental Physics) until his death, in New Haven, in 1915.

Dr. Wright pioneered in many different areas of research in physics and astronomy. He developed the glow discharge preparation of reflecting optics and used these extensively in the first studies of polarization of the solar corona. He first discovered the occurrence of gases in stony meteorites and subjected them to extensive chemical and spectroscopic investigation.

Immediately following the discovery of X-radiation, he was the first American to produce and the first to utilize this radiation in his analytic studies.