Melvin N. Gough was born in Washington, D. C., in 1906. He received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 1926. In the same year he began a long career with the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in Hampton, Virginia. From 1926 to 1958, Gough was successively an engineer, a test pilot (he was commissioned as a naval aviator in 1929), Chief Test Pilot, and Chief of Flight Research at NACA-Langley.

When the NACA became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, Gough transferred to Cape Canaveral, where he was Director of NASA Operations at the Atlantic Missile Range for two years. In 1960, he became Director of the Bureau of Safety for the Civil Aeronautics Board. From 1962 to 1964 he was Director of Aircraft Development of the Federal Aviation Agency, retiring from government service in 1964. He died on March 6, 1994.

Gough's professional organization memberships include the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (of which he was a Fellow) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (also a Fellow). He served on the Board of Governors of the Flight Safety Foundation and was a charter member of the Society of Air Safety Investigators. He received the Octave Chanute Award for Test Pilots from the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences in 1941 for "outstanding contributions in the field of aeronautics"; the Distinguished Service Award from the Flight Safety Foundation in 1956 for "distinguished service in achieving safer utilization of aircraft"; and the Flight Safety Foundation's Laura Taber Barbour Award in 1960 for championing "through unstinting personal activity the cause of flight safety." For his contributions to aeronautical history, Gough was elected to the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame.