Hugh Campbell was born in Kimberley, South Africa, on 8 January 1914, the son of Robert Hugh Campbell, an electrical engineer who was South African by birth, and Catherine, née Phillips, who was Welsh. The family left South Africa and settled in Britain when Campbell was six years old, and he subsequently obtained dual nationality. He was educated at Llanelly Grammar School and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1939. After house appointments at Willesden General Hospital he was appointed surgical registrar at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 1940, and later served with the RAMC in India as surgical specialist with the rank of major from 1941 until the end of the war. In 1946 he was appointed senior surgical registrar at University College Hospital, but after a serious illness (later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis) he had to give up his intention of pursuing a surgical career. He was one of three doctors at the hospital presenting at the same time with acute transverse myelitis (one of whom, Tom Smith FRCS, died) and he was treated by Sir Francis Walsh, the well-known neurologist. Despite diminished sensation in his hands and feet, he was able to take up diagnostic radiology and was appointed registrar in that specialty at University College Hospital in 1952, later taking the DMRD in 1954. Between 1954 and 1974 his condition remained fairly stable and he served as consultant radiologist at King's College and Dulwich Hospitals until he retired at 60. Even after this he continued to do locum x-ray sessions for several years while living in Dorset, until loss of sensation in his feet made it impossible for him to drive a car safely. In 1941 he married Ruth Elisabeth Weeks, a nurse, who survived him. They had no children. His outside interests included portrait and landscape painting and classical music. After several TIA's he died from a stroke on 7 July 1996 in Dorset.