Hugh was born in 1930 in the small town of Wyoming, Ohio, the youngest of five children. His father was a prominent urologic surgeon who introduced him to the medical world at a young age, encouraged him to pursue medicine as a career and had an important influence on his trajectorial choices. Hugh was an undergraduate student at Stanford University, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1952. It was during this time that he was introduced to experimental research in a serious way, performing genetic studies on fungal recombination. This early imprinting of a genetic mindset was to color his studies on immune responsiveness in the years to come. Hugh went on to earn a medical degree from Harvard University Medical School in 1955. Choosing to specialize in internal medicine, he did residencies at Peter Brent Brigham Hospital in Boston and Bellevue Hospital in New York. A subsequent two-year stint in the army, as a military physician stationed in Japan, solidified his desire to pursue medical research. He performed postdoctoral work with Albert Coons at Harvard Medical School and subsequently with John Humphrey at Mill Hill in London, where his interest in immunology became irresistible.
In 1966, Hugh was hired as an assistant professor at Stanford, where he spent the remainder of his career. In addition to running a world-class research program and teaching graduate students, he served as chief of the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology, director of the Clinical Immunology Laboratory, and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, at various junctures. He retired, to become an emeritus professor, in 2008.
