[1] Wright's research focused on arid-region geomorphology and landscape evolution, with an emphasis on glacial geology and climate history.

The combined British and American operations delivered an estimated 10,000 tons of rations to the survivors of the Dutch Famine (the "hunger winter").

[12] Wright invited experienced European pollen analysts and paleoecologists to help develop the laboratory and to advise students.

[12] Wright published more than 200 international scientific papers, edited 21 books or special issues of journals,[14] 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.

[8][3] 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.

[6] Wright received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Paleolimnology Association in 2009 at its meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico.

[15][16] Wright's research aimed to reconstruct the late-Quaternary history of various regions and apply these findings to enhance understanding of present and future environmental changes.

Wright met his wife, Rhea Jan Hahn (1921–1988) in church at Harvard University and Radcliffe College in the early 1940s.

[33] Wright regularly conducted scientific fieldwork; sampling lake sediments, mapping moraines, or studying landscape patterns.

He is survived by his sons Dick, John, Andy, and Jeffrey along with his grandchildren Patrick, Christopher, Thierry, and Theora, and great-grandson Adrian.