Edward Hughes (surgeon)  Sir Edward Hughes (4 July 1919 – 16 October 1998) was an eminent Melbourne colorectal surgeon. He was a professor of surgery at Monash University and served as president of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and chairman of the Menzies Foundation. He played a significant role in influencing the Victorian Government to become the first jurisdiction in the world to introduce legislation for the compulsory use of seat belts in motor vehicles. Edward Stuart Reginald Hughes was born on 4 July 1919 in Bruthen, Victoria. He was the third of four children of Reginald Hawkins Hughes and Annie Grace Langford. He was known throughout his life as "Bill", a nickname arising from the fact that he was born during the prime ministership of William Morris ("Billy") Hughes. Hughes attended St Paul's Preparatory School in Malvern, Victoria between 1924 and 1926 and then Melbourne Church of England Grammar School between 1927 and 1937. At school, he distinguished himself in Australian rules football, tennis and athletics. Hughes studied medicine at the University of Melbourne between 1938 and 1943. In the course of his undergraduate studies, he was awarded the Dwight's Prize in Anatomy and Physiology (1940), the Walter and Eliza Hall Exhibition in Pathology (1941), the Keith Levi Memorial Scholarship for Medicine (1943) and was placed first in his final year class list in obstetrics and gynaecology (1943). He represented Melbourne University in Australian rules football and was awarded an Australian Blue for football in 1938. Hughes began work as a junior medical resident officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1943. Between 1946 and 1949 he occupied various positions in Oxford and London whilst studying for his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (FRCS) and then in 1950 he resumed work in Australia as an assistant surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. Variously described as "brilliant", a "surgeon of international repute" "one of the most brilliant surgeons and surgical teachers in Australia", a "world-leader in the field of colorectal surgery" and "one of the most distinguished Australian surgeons of the second half of the twentieth century", Hughes was appointed in 1974 as Professor of Surgery at Monash University, a position he retained until 1984. Between 1977 and 1979, he was also Associate Dean of the Monash University Faculty of Medicine and, throughout this period, he was a consultant surgeon and a member of the Board of Management at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne.