West FRCP (born 1928) is a respiratory physiologist who made major research contributions in the area of ventilation-perfusion relationships in the lung.

He led a medical research expedition to Mount Everest in 1981, which investigated the influence of altitude and exertion on human physiology.

After working as a postdoctoral fellow with Hermann Rahn at Buffalo in 1961-62, he returned to London as Director of the Respiratory Research Group at Postgraduate Medical School (1962–1967) and was promoted to University Reader there in 1968.

After sabbatical leave at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California in 1968, he was invited to join the faculty of the new School of Medicine at the University of California at San Diego as professor of medicine and physiology.

Also in that year he served as a member of a NAS Committee on Space Biology.