Recruiting a Scientific Enigma: Ramsay Wright at the University of Toronto and its Reconstituted Medical School, 1874–1912

Abstract

Ramsay Wright was appointed in 1874 to the University of Toronto’s Chair in Natural History through an advertised competition designed to replace patronage with adjudicating candidates on merit. An absence of transparency and inconsistencies in the outcome, however, provoke doubts that the process was pursued fairly to acquire the most qualified candidate. Premier Mowat passed over eminently-qualified Canadians for this inexperienced Edinburgh lab tutor. The Darwinian orientation of his education together with training in the German scientific research methods, although sub rosa criteria because of their political contentiousness, appear to have been decisive for Wright’s selection. From archival evidence, this study contrasts the recently-enacted protocol for fair, objective faculty recruitment with the shadowy process through which Wright was chosen. Once installed, with sparkling lecturing skills and the benefit of mentoring, Wright sidestepped his modest research output to progress in administration. Passed over for Toronto’s presidency, he diverged to embrace a later-discredited aspect of evolution, advocating publicly for human eugenics. Wright retired to Oxford in 1912, after which the more engaging aspects of his persona were periodically burnished for the university’s commemorative contexts.