Sir Almroth Wright (1861 1947) was half Irish, half Swedish and English born. He made many important contributions to science, and has been ranked alongside the great bacteriologists Pasteur and Koch.

In 1896 he developed the first successful vaccine against typhoid which saved over 100,000 lives in World War I. Wright was one of the first to explain how immune cells (phagocytes) fight infection by attacking microbes in the blood. His friend George Bernard Shaw included an explanation of this in his satirical play about the medical profession, The Doctor's Dilemma.