Mike Hughes was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in 1936. His father was a doctor. He has two younger brothers. He went to school at Orwell Park (nr Ipswich), and from there to Lancing College, Sussex, with a scholarship. He took Classics initially, switching later to science and medicine. He studied physiology (for medicine) at Trinity College, Oxford, from 1956-60, with the neuroscientist, Charles Phillips, as his tutor. He became interested in respiratory physiology, taught by Drs DJC Cunningham and BB Lloyd. He won a scholarship to the London Hospital Medical College, and received his clinical training at “The London” in Whitechapel. He obtained the Oxford BM, BCh in 1963 and worked as a House Physician to the Medical Unit (Professor Clifford Wilson, and Drs JM Ledingham and MA Floyer ).
In 1965, Mike went to the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital, as House Physician to Drs CM Fletcher and Moran Campbell, and stayed there, in effect, until his retirement from clinical responsibilities in 1997. In 1966, he took three years away from clinical medicine to undertake research training, first under Dr John West at the (Royal) Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS), learning how to perfuse isolated lungs and the techniques of regional lung function using radionuclides (133Xe and C15O2). A Medical Research Council Fellowship (Dorothy Temple Cross) took him to Harvard (Dept. of Physiology, Harvard School of Public Health) where he studied various aspects of lung mechanics under Professor Jere Mead.
Mike Hughes returned to Hammersmith and the RPMS, in Autumn 1969 as a Lecturer in the Department of Medicine, becoming a Senior Lecturer in 1974 (and Honorary Consultant Physician to Hammersmith Hospital), Reader in 1985, and Professor of Thoracic Medicine and Radiology in 1993; the Radiology title recognised his research contributions to radioisotope imaging using MRC Cyclotron–produced radionuclides. He was a member of professional societies in the UK and abroad, such as the Physiological Society, Medical Research Society, British Thoracic Society, European Respiratory Society and American Thoracic Society. He has been Visiting Professor at Universities abroad, and has given named lectures in Budapest, New York City, and Hamilton, Ontario.
His principal research interests and publications, and most recent book, are listed in a separate link.
Mike Hughes has continued academic work since his retirement in 1997 from clinical work and administration, and has an honorary appointment at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College. He continued to teach, and contributes clinical and academic reviews, editorials and textbook chapters, and regularly referees papers for American, British and European journals. He remains an expert opinion on pulmonary gas exchange and pulmonary diffusion and lung function tests. He has written three books since “retiring” and over 40 publications. He was awarded the British Thoracic Society’s Medal in 2008.
Mike was President of the Harveian Society of London for the year 2016.
Mike married Shirley (née Stenning) in 1963, and they have two daughters, a grandson and a grand-daughter.