Art Wright served as the “party chief” on our expedition to the Pacific Ocean, in search of fragments from the crash site of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1. “Party chief” is the senior leader who oversees and manages a field survey team, directing its operations, and ensures that work is completed accurately, safely, and on time.
I served as the “chief scientist” for the expedition. Our research team completed two extensive peer-reviewed publications by now on our findings (accessible here and here), with a few more anticipated in the coming year.
The expedition was coordinated in zoom calls. I met Art for the first time in person on the deck of our aluminum ship, which was fittingly called “Silver Star.” He reminded me of my father with his integrity, honesty and work ethic. He did not say much but everything he said was true and insightful. In our first zoom calls we disagreed about technical details, but later became close friends.
Art’s main virtue is his focus on accomplishing the goals. He would solve problems on his own to the extent possible and only burden others with words if absolutely necessary. His solutions had the mark of a genius. Let me illustrate that with one example.
Our ship had a winch that released a long cable to carry a meter-scale sled covered with magnets that Art helped design and test ahead of time. The sled was supposed to skim the ocean floor and collect iron-rich fragments, some potentially from IM1. In the first couple of days, our sled was lifted like a kite by the water flow around it and the tension of the cable. Within a day, Art figured out the solution: make the sled heavier by adding lead, extend the cable to a 5-kilometer length and take into account the ocean currents. It worked!
According to the expedition coordinator, Rob McCallum, all ocean expeditions led by Art were successful. His full name is Arthur St. Claire Wright but I like the abbreviated version of Art Wright because he masters the art of being right.
Art was a commander of a destroyer warship during the Vietnam War. In 1987, he became Vice President of Operations at Williamson & Associates in Seattle, and a few years ago — the founder of Marine Induced Polarization Associates. His expertise involves basic research in underwater acoustics, seafloor engineering. and management of field operations. He was an Unlimited Ocean Master in the US Coast Guard, and sailed as Chief Mate in the SL-7 M/V Capella during the Gulf War in 1991. Art retired as Captain in the United States Navy. During his last tour, he was commander of the Pacific Fleet mine forces. Earlier assignments included commanding three ships and serving on a variety of staffs in Vietnam and as a mine warfare specialist. Art received a B.Sc. in Naval Science, from United States Naval Academy and an M.Sc. in Engineering Acoustics, from United States Naval Postgraduate School. He is a certified American Congress of Surveying and Mapping Hydrographer.
In my lecture to first-year students at Harvard College this week, I explained that Art epitomizes the polar opposite to the culture of “virtue signaling” which dominates social media, academia and politics these days. Art is focused on solving the problems and not about showing off. In academia, one sees many who speak loudly on how much they care about blacks or Palestinians, but they never leave campus and actually go to black neighborhoods or to Gaza to help the people they claim to care about. Instead, Art offers the unpopular alternative of not saying much and doing the best he can to solve the problems that he cares about. Some may call this quality old fashioned. I call it being honest with yourself.
Art is now in his late eighties. A year ago, I met him in the Seattle airport. We sat at the coffee shop for more than an hour, planning our next ocean expedition to retrieve large pieces of IM1. We converged on many important details regarding the engineering and management of the next expedition. As we finished our conversation, Art insisted on paying 10 dollars to our server, a tip of that was four times the cost of the coffee he ordered. “She deserves it for allowing us to speak that long, as other customers could have used our space,” he noted quietly. “And we had our time well spent,” he concluded. By the size of the server’s smile, it was evident that Art made her day. He paid it forward.
“When you get that old, some parts stop functioning,” he said in reference to the cane that he was leaning on. “We would all be better off if we leaned on Art’s principles,” I thought to myself but said nothing. Similarly, I never said much to my father. We understood each other. We went through life like collaborative members of a sports team, in which success is dictated by what you do, not by how much you talk.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
