[2] Pugh went to Harrow School, and between 1928 and 1931 took a degree in law at New College, Oxford University, although he switched to medicine, which he studied for three more years, after which he qualified at St Thomas' Hospital, London, in 1938, where he subsequently worked.
[3] Having served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Britain, Greece, Crete, Egypt, Ceylon, Iraq and Jerusalem,[1] Pugh was invited by fellow Harrovian W. J. Riddell, on the basis of his skiing and climbing expertise, to join the recently established School of Mountain Warfare at the Cedars resort in Lebanon, working for two years alongside A. D. M. Cox (an Oxford don and a considerable alpinist in his own right) and John Carryer.
The writer Michael Gill unearthed a copy with Pugh's other papers in the Mandeville Special Collection of the University of California, San Diego.
[10] Pugh accompanied the Mount Everest expedition as field physiologist under the sponsorship of the Medical Research Council,[11] although he did not travel with the main party, which left England for India in February 1953 aboard the S.S. Stratheden.
[12] Pugh also designed the diet, which included 400g of sugar a day for the assault party, most of which "astonishing amount", according to Band, was consumed by the Sherpas in their tea.
[23] Indeed, in the film, Pugh was depicted as a mad scientist, "belittled, his work passed over without mention", because to the British establishment of the time, Tuckey maintains, science was perceived as unheroic and to stress its key role would have undermined the heroism of the ascent.
", Band lists among the factors "the research of those, such as Griff Pugh, Dr Bradley and the developers of our oxygen sets who all helped to ensure that our acclimatization, clothing and equipment were better than ever before".
Pugh was invited by the University of California's Nello Pace in 1956–57 to the Scott Base in Antarctica to carry out research into carbon monoxide poisoning in huts and tents, the adaptation to and tolerance of cold, and the warming effect of solar radiation.