Archie Wilmotte Leslie Bray

[1] Bray is credited by Nobel laureate Harold Ulrey as being an inspiration for him in switching from psychology to the natural sciences.

A family legend credits Roger with keeping a truant young Archie in school after their father died.

At the turn of the century Bray traveled through "most of the United States and some of South America" before he returned to England in 1905 to attend Cambridge University.

[2] According to Harold Urey's apocryphal account of his early mentor, after receiving his natural science degree Bray was eager to travel and having spent all his money on passage across the Atlantic “started his sightseeing by train – freight train.” [Thomas, “Harold C. Urey,” p. 221] Bray did acknowledge that during this time he toured Newfoundland for two years and taught school in Labrador.

At some point, Urey's story goes, the university realized that they had a Cambridge-educated biologist in their midst and Bray was promoted to the position of assistant professor in zoology."

"Professor Bray was just a splendid, model teacher who opened up the whole fascinating world of science to me.” [Urey, “Unpublished Autobiography,” 4.]

When Urey felt some pressure to join his fraternity brothers in military service and take part in the excitement of the war effort Bray advised his protege to join the war effort with his chemical training, telling the budding scientist that “A trained chemist should serve on the chemical side.” [ William R. Shelton, “Harold Urey, Adventurer,” in 1965, Science Year: The World Book Science Annual (Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1965), 354. ]

[6] As a founding member of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Department of Biology in 1925, it was as an educator that Bray would distinguish himself throughout the rest of his career.