The Rev Michael Humphreys obituary

In the mid-1960s my friend Michael Humphreys, who has died aged 89, joined the scientific civil service and began work at the government’s Building Research Station in Garston, Hertfordshire, on thermal comfort. His colleague Charles Webb’s field data, gathered from Singapore, India, Iraq and the UK, showed that people were comfortable in widely different room temperatures, from the high teens in the UK to the mid-30s in Baghdad. Fergus Nicol joined the team in 1966 and together they developed adaptive thermal comfort research, focusing on the importance of different customs, behaviours and attitudes in different climates on the comfort of people in buildings. Their findings clearly contrasted with the narrow temperature bands mandated in building standards by the air-conditioning industry, which were based on limited research in laboratory conditions. In 1972, Michael and Nicol presented their pioneering adaptive comfort theory at an international conference, and it now underpins global standards. In 1978, Michael’s calling to the Baptist ministry took him from Garston to Regent’s Park College, Oxford. He was ordained as a minister in 1981 and moved with his wife, Mary, to Tring i