Archibald Vivian Hill CH OBE FRS (26 September 1886 – 3 June 1977), known as A. V. Hill, was a British physiologist, one of the founders of the diverse disciplines of biophysics and operations research. He shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his elucidation of the production of heat and mechanical work in muscles.
Archibald Vivian Hill CH OBE FRS (26 September 1886 – 3 June 1977), known as A. V. Hill, was a British physiologist, one of the founders of the diverse disciplines of biophysics and operations research. He shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his elucidation of the production of heat and mechanical perform in muscles.
Born in Bristol, he was educated at Blundell’s School and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge as third wrangler in the mathematics tripos since turning to physiology. While yet an undergraduate at Trinity College, he derived in 1909 what came to be known as the Langmuir equation. This is closely related to Michaelis-Menten kinetics. In this paper, Hill’s first publication, he derived both the equilibrium form of the Langmuir equation, and after that the exponential entry to equilibrium. The paper, written below the government of John Newport Langley, is a landmark in the archives of receptor theory, because the context for the derivation was the binding of nicotine and curare to the “receptive substance” at the neuromuscular junction.
While a student he had enrolled in the Officers Training Corps; he was a crack shot. In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, Hill became the musketry official of the Cambridgeshire Regiment. The British made no effort to make use of their scientists. At the grow less of 1915, while house on depart he was asked by Horace Darwin from the Ministry of Munitions at the forefront for a morning to advise them upon how to train anti-aircraft gunners. On site, Hill tersely proposed a easy two mirror method to determine airplanes’ heights. Transferred to Munitions, he realized that the mirrors could measure where smoke bullets burst and if he fitted this data later the equations describing a shell’s flight they could give accurate range tables for anti-aircraft guns. To conduct yourself and compute he assembled the Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section, a team of men too archaic for conscription, Ralph H. Fowler (a pained officer), and lads too youthful for help including Douglas Hartree, Arthur Milne and James Crowther. Someone dubbed his motley group “Hill’s Brigands”, which they proudly adopted. Later in the raid they along with worked upon locating opposition planes from their sound. He sped along with their operational sites upon his beloved motorcycle. At the end of the engagement Major Hill issued certificates to higher than one hundred Brigands. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
In 1923 he succeeded Ernest Starling as professor of physiology at University College London, a few years sophisticated becoming a Royal Society Research professor there, where he remained until retirement in 1951. In 1933, he became in the aerate of William Beveridge and Lord Rutherford a founder believer and vice-president of the Academic Assistance Council (which in 1936 became the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning). By the Begin of the Second World War, the organisation had saved 900 academics (18 of whom went upon to win Nobel Prizes) from Nazi persecution. He prominently displayed in his laboratory a toy figure of Adolf Hitler later than saluting arm upraised, which he explained was in gratitude for everything the scientists Germany had expelled, some of whom were now on the go with him. Hill believed that “Laughter is the best detergent for nonsense”.
In 1935 he served as soon as Patrick Blackett and Sir Henry Tizard upon the committee that gave birth to radar. He was then biological secretary of the Royal Society; William Henry Bragg was president. Both had been annoyed by the put off in putting scientists to affect in the previous war. The Royal Society collated a list of scientists and Hill represented the Society at the Ministry of Labour. When the skirmish came Hill led a stir to liberate refugee scientists who had been interned. He served as an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Cambridge University from 1940 to 1945. In 1940 he was posted to the British Embassy in Washington to promote accomplishment research in the nevertheless neutral United States. He was authorized to every other secrets gone the Americans, but this could not work: how do you place a value upon another’s secret? Hill saw the answer and persuaded the British to work the Americans whatever they were on the go on (except for the atomic bomb). The mobilization of Allied scientists was one of the major successes in the war.
After the dogfight he rebuilt his laboratory at University College and vivaciously carried upon research. In 1951 his advocacy was rewarded by the opening of a Biophysics Department below his leadership. In 1952 he became head of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and Secretary General of the International Council of Scientific Unions. He was President of the Marine Biological Association from 1955 to 1960. In 1967 he retired to Cambridge where he gradually wandering the use of his legs. He died “held in the greatest affection by greater than a hundred scientific descendants whatever over the world”.