Archibald Hill

He married Margaret Keynes in 1913. The couple was blessed with four children, two sons and two daughters namely, Polly Hill, David Keynes Hill, Maurice Hill and Janet Hill.

Archibald Vivian Hill breathed his last on June 3, 1977 at Cambridge, England.

Posthumously in 2015, an English Heritage Blue plaque was erected at Hill's former home, 16 Bishopswood Road, Highgate. The house was redeveloped and renamed as Hurstbourne

Archibald Vivian Hill was born on September 26, 1886 at Bristol, England. Not much is known about his parents or his childhood days.

Hill received his early education from Blundell’s School. He later received a scholarship that helped him gain admission at the Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he studied mathematics and was a Third Wrangler in Mathematical Tripos.

Following his mathematical pursuits, Hill turned his attention to physiology. The move came after his teacher Dr Walter Morley Fletcher urged Hill to take up physiology.

In 1909, Hill started his research work on physiology. It was due to John Newport Langley, Head of the Department of Physiology, that he took to studying the nature of muscle contraction. Langley turned Hill’s attention to the problem of lactic acid in muscle in relation to the effect of oxygen upon its removal in recovery. Same year, Hill published his first paper which became a landmark in the history of receptor theory.

In the early days of his career, Hill used the Blix apparatus—equipment obtained from the Swedish physiologist Magnus Blix. He conducted various experiments on the heat production of contracting muscles, through which he came up with exacting measurements of the physics of nerves and muscles.

In 1910, Hill received a fellowship at Trinity. He spent the winter of 1911 working with Burker and Paschen in Germany. Until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he worked on a range of topics in physiology such as nervous impulse, haemoglobin, calorimetry of animals, along with his colleagues in Cambridge and Germany. Alongside, he continued with his work on physiology of muscular contraction.

In 1914, Hill was appointed as a University Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Cambridge. The appointment turned his attention from physiology. During World War I, he served as a Captain and Brevet-major. He also took up the post of the Director of the Munitions Inventions Department for Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section.

Post War, he returned to Cambridge and started studying the physiology of muscles. It was during this time that he met Meyerhof of Kiel. Though Kiel studied the problem from a different angle, his results were similar to that of Hill. Same year, Hill collaborated with W. Hartree in the myothermic investigations.

Hill’s most important contribution to science came in the field of physiology. He dedicated his life to the understanding of muscle physiology. Through his research, he discovered the production of heat and mechanical work in muscles. He was also one of the founding figures of the diverse disciplines of biophysics and operation research.