Everett Hughes was born in Ohio and received his B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1918. He earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1928. He came to McGill as Assistant Professor of Sociology in 1927 and remained until 1938 when he received an appointment at the University of Chicago. Hughes' special field of research was racial, cultural and religious group organization and conflict. In 1931-1932 he took a leave of absence from McGill to study Protestant-Catholic relations in southern Germany. Much of his published work concerns the French and English in Québec, and in 1965 he returned to McGill for a year as Visiting Professor in the French Canada Studies Programme.