Trivia

Her second husband, Jukka Jernvall, is a Finnish paleontologist and developmental biologist who works at the University of Helsinki when she is in Madagascar.

Patricia Wright began as a mother (of a daughter Amanda) and housewife. In the 1960s, she bought two owl monkeys from a Brooklyn, N.Y., pet store. To learn more about them, she and her family traveled to Peru to see them in their native habitat. Her enthusiasm sent her back to school to become a primatologist.

Awarded the "Chevalier d'Ordre National" (National Medal of Honor of Madagascar) from the President of Madagascar in 1995.

In 1989, she became a MacArthur Fellow awarded from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Has served as the Executive Director for the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments since 1992 and as the International Coordinator for the Ranomafana National Park Project in Madagascar since 1987.

Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

In 1986, discovered a new species of lemur, the golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus). Her excitement and anxiety for the animals there drove her to become a conservationist and to get governmental support to establish Ranomafana National Park, rain forest in Antananarivo, Madagascar, in 1991, a preserve for lemurs and other endangered species.

Received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the City University of New York in 1985 for her dissertation entitled "Costs and Benefits of Nocturnality for the Night Monkey (Aotus)."

Grew up in upstate New York.