Wright, Daniel E. Papers

Official, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, c.1945-1948.

The papers of Daniel E. Wright contain reports, printed materials, and correspondence pertaining to his career as a public health official and his involvement in efforts to eliminate malaria in Greece after World War II.

Size: Less than one linear foot (approximately 400 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donor has given their copyright in these papers to the United States of America. Records created by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are also in the public domain. The copyright interest in other documents in the collection presumably belongs to the creators of those documents or their heirs.
Processed by: Randy Sowell (2024).

Daniel Edward Wright was born in Frederick County, Virginia, on November 18, 1883. He earned a B.S. degree in civil engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1904. Wright began his long career in public health and disease control in the Panama Canal Zone, where he was involved in the successful campaign against malaria and yellow fever during the construction of the Panama Canal. He later served as a consultant to the governments of Colombia and Panama, an expert on disease control for the Rockefeller Foundation, a colonel in the U.S. Public Health Service, and a sanitary and malaria engineer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Wright spent much of his life pursuing his work in Central and South America, in the Middle East, and in Burma, Greece and Turkey. After World War II, he pioneered in efforts to eliminate malaria in Greece through the use of DDT, before its dangerous side effects became known. Wright died in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on November 10, 1962.

The papers of Daniel E. Wright contain reports, printed materials, and correspondence pertaining to his career as a public health official and his involvement in efforts to eliminate malaria in Greece after World War II. Some of the materials relate to the use of DDT in the fight against malaria, while others are concerned with the unsettled conditions in Greece in the years after the war. Also documented are Wright’s life and career as a public health official, various methods and substances used to fight epidemic diseases, and the promotion of health in rural communities. Greek-language materials are included in the collection, as are articles from English-language newspapers published in Greece and the Middle East.

The papers were originally opened for research as part of the General Historical Documents Collection (GHDC No. 98 and No. 99). A larger collection of Daniel E. Wright Papers is at Virginia Tech University (Special Collections and University Archives).