Background
Wright was born in Dulwich, the son of a clergyman of the Church of England, and was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a first in physiology.
Wright was born in Dulwich, the son of a clergyman of the Church of England, and was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a first in physiology.
Trinity College.
He then proceeded to Street Bartholomew"s Hospital and qualified as a doctor in 1938. After his time at Baronet"s as a medical registrar, in 1942 Wright joined the Royal Army Medical Corps to work as a pathologist. During the Second World War he was posted to Sierra Leone, and after the war to Singapore, where he organized the reinstatement of medical laboratory services.
He rose to the rank of Colonel, and after demobilization continued to work as a pathologist, before joining the Medical Research Council for a new unit at Llandough Hospital studying pneumoconiosis.
The unit needed equipment which did not then exist, and Wright developed it himself. To measure lung function, in 1956 he invented the peak flow meter.
After the research unit"s results were published in 1959, "peak flow" became a standard measure of respiratory function for most lung diseases. Millions of peak flow meters have since been produced.
Wright went on to develop several other medical innovations.