Derek Salman Pugh was a psychologist, business theorist and Emeritus Professor of International Management at the Open University. He was born in Tottenham, London, on 31 August 1930. Pugh was an Edinburgh University alumnus - M.A. (Psychology) 1953, M.Sc.(Industrial sociology) 1956 - and he earned his DSc in 1973 from the University of Aston. In the 1960s he had moved to the London Business School, where he became Britain’s first professor of organisational behaviour. In 2009 the Aston University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate (DLitt). He is known for his work in the field of organisational development (OD), and particularly for the 'Pugh Matrix', a tool within OD.

Pugh had collected this material relating to the Edinburgh University Dramatic Society of which he had been a part while at Edinburgh University in the 1950s. The EU Dramatic Society had been founded in 1896, and lives on today in the Edinburgh University Theatre Company (EUTC).

In 1957, Pugh directed the Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group production of Venus Observed staged at the University Theatre Adam House, as well as producing The Wild Duck by Ibsen earlier in 1952 with the EU Dramatic Society. His 'Company' also put on a production of Maria Marten, or Murder in the old red barn, 1954. He also directed The Male animal in 1954. Derek Salman Pugh died on 29 January 2015.