Herb Wright

Wright was born on 13 September 1917 in Malden, Massachusetts. His father, Herbert Edgar Wright Sr. was an osteopath who died during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919. His mother, Annie Mabel Richardson (1878–1964), was a nurse. Wright had an elder sister, Helena (1915–2010) who studied biology. He attended high school in Malden. He supplemented his meagre pocket money by cutting grass, selling papers, delivering and selling doughnuts made by his mother on Saturday mornings, and singing in local choirs.[6] Wright graduated with a BA magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1939 and received his MA and PhD in geology from Harvard University in 1941 and 1943, respectively. His PhD thesis was published in 1946.[7] His PhD advisor and later mentor was Kirk Bryan Sr.[8]

When America entered World War II, Wright enlisted in 1942 as an air-cadet and became a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber pilot in the United States Army Air Corps. He made two tours of combat duty based in Britain and flew 48 missions in 1944–1945 including runs over Germany during D-Day, over Berlin after D-Day, and at the Battle of the Bulge. He served as a pilot, command pilot, and group operations officer, reaching the rank of major.[9] He was awarded the Air Medal six times, the Distinguished Flying Cross twice, and the Croix de Guerre from Charles de Gaulle.[10]

After his war service, Wright was appointed in 1945 to be a teaching instructor at Brown College (now Brown University) (Providence, Rhode Island). He moved to the University of Minnesota in September 1947 as an assistant professor in the then Department of Geology (in 1962 it became the Department of Geology and Geophysics and is now the Department of Earth Sciences). He was promoted to associate professor of geology in 1951 and to professor of geology in 1959. He was also appointed professor of botany in 1965 and in ecology in 1970 within the newly-formed Department of Ecology and Evolution and Behavioral Biology (now the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior) at the University of Minnesota. He was named Regents' Professor of Geology, Ecology, and Botany in 1974 and became Regents' Professor Emeritus in 1988.[11]

After his PhD, Wright used pollen analysis to reconstruct environmental change and landscape history.[12] With a grant from the Hill Family Foundation (now the Northwest Area Foundation[13]) in 1956, Wright established in 1958 a pollen laboratory in Minnesota.[14] Wright invited experienced European pollen analysts and paleoecologists to help develop the laboratory and to advise students.[15] With a separate grant from the Hill Family Foundation, the Limnological Research Center (LRC) was established in 1959. The pollen laboratory was incorporated within the LRC in 1963 and Wright was the LRC Director until 1990.[16]

Wright published more than 200 international scientific papers, edited 21 books or special issues of journals,[17] and supervised 36 PhD dissertations and 38 MSc or MA theses in the University of Minnesota's Departments of Geology, Ecology, and Botany, and its Center for Ancient Studies. He had a large teaching load, both in the lecture room and in the field, and was involved as an advisor for many graduate students and post-doctoral visitors.[18][19]

Wright formally retired from his Regents’ Professorship in 1988 but continued to participate in lake-coring expeditions to remote parts of the globe, including the high Peruvian Andes, Glacier Bay in Alaska, the Azores, the Bulgarian Pirin mountains, the Caucasus of Georgia, and the Siberian Altai.[20] Wright received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Paleolimnology Association in 2009 at its meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico.[21][22]

The overarching aim of Wright's activities was to reconstruct the late-Quaternary history of individual areas and ultimately of the world and to use these reconstructions to improve our understanding of the present and the future.[23][24] He made contributions to geoarchaeology;[25] the glacial, vegetational, and climate history of Minnesota;[26][27] paleolimnology;[28] the Cooperative Holocene Mapping Project (COHMAP);[29] patterned peatland development;[30] fire ecology and landscape development;[31] and fieldcraft.[32] Wright also invented the Wright square-rod piston corer.[33] He has a peak named after him, Wright Peak (1510 m) 0.9 km south of Sutley Peak in the Jones Mountains, Antarctica (73° 40’ S, 94° 32’ W).

Wright met his wife-to-be Rhea Jan Hahn (1921–1988) in church choirs at Harvard University and Radcliffe College in the early 1940s and they married on 27 June 1943. Wright was then an air-cadet in the Army Air Corps and Rhea was a nursing student at Yale School of Nursing. They had six sons (Richard (1944–), Peter (1948–1955), John (1950–), Rex (1953–1988), Andy (1955–), and Jeffrey (1959–).

Wright enjoyed classical music, particularly from the Classical and Early Romantic periods (e.g. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms), and he regularly attended concerts of the Minnesota Orchestra, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Music in the Park (now the Schubert Club).[53]

Wright loved wilderness, often, but not always, doing scientific fieldwork such as sampling lake sediments, mapping moraines, or studying landscape patterns. After his official retirement, he took a one or two week canoe trip almost every fall to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota.[54]

Wright died at home in Saint Anthony Park, Saint Paul on 12 November 2015 after a long illness. He is survived by his sons Dick, John, Andy, and Jeffrey along with his grandchildren Patrick, Christopher, Thierry, and Theora, and great-grandson Adrian. For the last 14 years of his life, Wright was cared for by his friend and colleague Vania Stefanova.[55]