The Graduate School remembers longtime faculty member Anthony A. “Tony” Wright, PhD, an accomplished cognitive psychologist, educator and mentor who died in August. Wright, professor emeritus at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, was associated with the Graduate School for five decades.

Wright joined the Graduate School faculty in 1972 and remained a member until his retirement in 2022. Over those five decades, he taught and mentored students in the Neuroscience Program and served for many years as course director for Cognitive Neuroscience, drawing on his expertise in learning, memory and comparative cognition.

As a professor at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, Wright built an internationally recognized research career investigating how information is perceived, learned, stored and retrieved. His pioneering studies of memory across species helped advance the field of comparative cognition and earned honors including the Comparative Cognition Society’s Lifetime Research Award and election as a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

For Graduate School students, Wright’s impact extended beyond his scientific contributions. He was deeply committed to education and mentorship, bringing intellectual curiosity, rigorous experimentation and decades of experience to the classroom and his work with trainees. Many of those he mentored pursued careers as researchers, professors and mentors themselves, extending his influence to new generations of scientists.

The Graduate School extends its condolences to Wright’s family, friends, colleagues and former trainees, and remembers with gratitude his many years of service to our students and academic community.

Read more about Wright’s life, scientific career and legacy in McGovern Medical School’s remembrance.