Ernest Marshall Wright FRS (born 1940) is an Irish-born American

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...

.Ancestry.com. U.S., Index to Public Records, 1994-2019 atabase on-line Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2020 He is primarily known for his work on the mechanisms of glucose-sodium co-transporters in intestinal and other tissues in humans and animals.

Biography

Ernest M. Wright was born in 1940 in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. He received his bachelors degree in physiology and chemistry at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

in 1961, and his Ph.D. in physiology in 1964 after studies in the laboratory of David Smyth FRS at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

. He became a member of the faculty at Sheffield, and two years later received a Fellowship at Harvard where he studied with Jared Diamond and

Stanley Schultz Stanley G. Schultz (October 26, 1931 – October 23, 2014) was an American physician and scientist whose work led to the development of oral rehydration therapy. He held the Fondren Family Chair in Cellular Signaling and the H. Wayne Hightower Di ...

in the Biophysics Laboratory headed by Arthur K. Solomon. In 1978 he was awarded a D.Sc. in Physiology from the University of London. Wright joined faculty at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

in 1967. While on the faculty of UCLA College of Medicine he distinguished himself as a leading researcher in glucose transporters in a wide variety of tissues. His work is the foundation of research leading to medical treatments for diabetes and obesity. Wright received the Senator

Jacob K. Javits Jacob Koppel Javits ( ; May 18, 1904 – March 7, 1986) was an American lawyer and politician. During his time in politics, he represented the state of New York in both houses of the United States Congress. A member of the Republican Party, he a ...

Neuroscience Investigator Award from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

from 1985 to 1992, and was named the Walter Bradford Cannon Distinguished Lecturer by the American Physiological Society in 1989. He was inducted as a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 2005 and a Fellow of the

Biophysical Society The Biophysical Society is an international scientific society whose purpose is to lead the development and dissemination of knowledge in biophysics. Founded in 1958, the Society currently consists of over 7,500 members in academia, government, an ...

that same year.

Selected publications

* Diamond, J.M. and E.M. Wright. 1969. Molecular forces governing non-electrolyte permeation through cell membranes. ''Proceedings of the Royal Society B'' 172(1028):273-316. *Wright, E.M. 1972. Active Transport of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. ''Nature'' 240:53–54 *Nord, E., S.H. Wright, I. Kippen, and E.M. Wright. 1982. Pathways for carboxylic acid transport by rabbit renal brush border membrane vesicles. ''American Journal of Physiology. Renal Physiology'' 243(5):F456-F462. *Meinild A, D.A. Klaerke, D.D. Loo, E.M. Wright, and T. Zeuthen. 1998 The human Na+-glucose cotransporter is a molecular water pump. ''Journal of Physiology'' 508(Pt 1):15-21. *Quick, M., and E.M. Wright. 2002. Employing ''Escherichia coli'' to functionally express, purify, and characterize a human transporter. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' 99(13):8597-8601. *Loo, D.F., B.A. Hirayama, M. Sala-Rabanal, and E.M. Wright. 2008. How drugs interact with transporters: SGLT1 as a model. ''Journal of Membrane Biology'' 223(2):87-106. *Wright, E.M., D.F Loo, and B.A. Hirayama. 2011. Biology of human sodium glucose transporters. ''Physiological Reviews'' 91(2):733-794.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wright, Ernest M. 1940 births Living people Alumni of the University of London Alumni of the University of Sheffield University of California faculty American physiologists Scientists from Los Angeles Scientists from Belfast 20th-century American biologists 21st-century American biologists