Midgley was educated at the University of Bristol where he was awarded a Master of Science degree in 1988[5] and a PhD in 1991[6] for work on electron microscopy of high-temperature superconductors.

Before moving to Cambridge in 1997, Midgley held two postdoctoral research fellowships in the Henry Herbert Wills Physics Laboratory at the University of Bristol.

[7][8][9][10][11] During his research, Midgley has collaborated with Mark Welland,[12] Rafal Dunin-Borkowski,[13] Neil Mathur,[14] John Meurig Thomas,[15][16] Brian F. G. Johnson[15] and Henning Sirringhaus.

His nomination reads: Midgley is distinguished for many innovations and impressive applications of transmission microscopy, diffraction and spectroscopy, particularly the pioneering development of sub-nanometre-scale electron tomography.

With his world leading position in medium resolution electron holography, he has been able to combine this with tomography in 3-d mapping of electric fields and dopant distributions in semiconductor devices.