Archibald Hill

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Archibald Vivian Hill
Notes
He is notably the father of Polly Hill, David Keynes Hill, Maurice Hill, and the grandfather of Nicholas Humphrey.

Archibald Vivian Hill

mechanical work in muscles.[3][4]

Biography

Born in Bristol, he was educated at Blundell's School and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge as third wrangler in the mathematics tripos before turning to physiology. While still an undergraduate at Trinity College, he derived in 1909[5] what came to be known as the Langmuir equation.[6]

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 also the exponential approach to equilibrium. The paper, written under the supervision of John Newport Langley, is a landmark in the history of receptor theory, because the context for the derivation was the binding of nicotine and curare to the "receptive substance" at the neuromuscular junction.[citation needed
]

While a student he had enrolled in the

First World War, Hill became the musketry officer of the Cambridgeshire Regiment. The British made no effort to make use of their scientists.[7][8]

At the end of 1915, while home on leave he was asked by

In 1923 he succeeded

Nazi persecution. He prominently displayed in his laboratory a toy figure of Adolf Hitler with saluting arm upraised, which he explained was in gratitude for all the scientists Germany had expelled, some of whom were now working with him.[10] Hill believed that "Laughter is the best detergent for nonsense".[11]

In 1935 he served with

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 war research in the still neutral United States. He was authorized to swap secrets with the Americans, but this could not work: how do you place a value on another's secret? Hill saw the answer and persuaded the British to show the Americans everything they were working on (except for the atomic bomb). The mobilization of Allied scientists was one of the major successes in the war.[12]

He visited India between November 1943 and April 1944 to survey scientific and technological research. His suggestions influenced the establishment of the IITs in the following decade.

After the war he rebuilt his laboratory at University College and vigorously carried on research.[13] In 1951 his advocacy was rewarded by the establishment of a Biophysics Department under his leadership.

In 1952, he became head 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 lost the use of his legs. He died "held in the greatest affection by more than a hundred scientific descendants all over the world".[14]

Cooperativity of protein binding and enzyme kinetics

Although Hill's work in muscle physiology is probably the most important, and certainly responsible for his Nobel Prize, he is also very well known in biochemistry for the Hill equation, which is used to quantify binding of oxygen to haemoglobin, written here as a kinetic equation:[15]

Here is the rate of reaction at concentration of substrate, is the rate at saturation, is the value of that gives , and the exponent is a parameter that expresses the degree of departure from Michaelis-Menten kinetics: positive cooperativity for , no cooperativity for , and negative cooperativity for . Note that there is no implication that is an integer, and in most experimental cases, apart from the trivial case of , it is not. Although many authors use or rather than these symbols are misleading if taken to imply that it shows the number of binding sites on the protein. Hill himself avoided any such interpretation.

The equation can be rearranged as follows:

This shows that when the Hill equation is accurately obeyed (which usually it is not) a plot of gives a straight line of slope . This is called a Hill plot.

Muscle physiology

Hill made many exacting measurements of the heat released when skeletal muscles contract and relax. A key finding was that heat is produced during contraction, which requires investment of chemical energy, but not during relaxation, which is passive.[16] His earliest measurements used equipment left behind by the Swedish physiologist Magnus Blix, Hill measured a temperature rise of only 0.003 °C. After publication he learned that German physiologists had already reported on heat and muscle contraction and he went to Germany to learn more about their work. He continually improved his apparatus to make it more sensitive and to reduce the time lag between the heat released by the preparation and its recording by his thermocouple.

Hill is regarded, along with

Hermann Helmholtz
, as one of the founders of biophysics.

Hill returned briefly to Cambridge in 1919 before taking the chair in physiology at the Victoria University of Manchester in 1920 in succession to William Stirling. Using himself as the subject —he ran every morning from 7:15 to 10:30 — he showed that running a dash relies on energy stores which afterwards are replenished by increased oxygen consumption. Paralleling the work of German Otto Fritz Meyerhof, Hill elucidated the processes whereby mechanical work is produced in muscles. The two shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for this work.[17] Hill introduced the concepts of maximal oxygen uptake and oxygen debt in 1922.[18][19]

Personal life

In 1913 he married Margaret Neville Keynes (1885-1974), daughter of the economist John Neville Keynes, and sister of the economist John Maynard Keynes and the surgeon Geoffrey Keynes. They had two sons and two daughters:

  • Polly Hill (1914–2005), economist, married K.A.C. Humphreys, registrar of the West African Examinations Council.
  • David Keynes Hill (1915–2002), physiologist, married Stella Mary Humphrey
  • Maurice Hill (1919–1966), oceanographer, married Philippa Pass
  • Janet Hill (1918–2000) child psychiatrist, married the immunologist
    John Herbert Humphrey
    .

Honors and awards

Blue plaque

Blue plaque at 16 Bishopswood Road, Highgate.

On 9 September 2015 an English Heritage Blue plaque was erected at Hill's former home, 16 Bishopswood Road, Highgate, where he had lived from 1923 to 1967. Since then the house had been divided into flats and owned by Highgate School, where Hill was a Governor from 1929 to 1960. It has now been sold, redeveloped and renamed as Hurstbourne. In Hill's time, according to his grandson Nicholas Humphrey, regular guests at the house included 18 exiled Nobel laureates, his brother-in-law, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and friends Stephen Hawking and Sigmund Freud. After-dinner conversations in the drawing room would inevitably involve passionate debates about science or politics. "Every Sunday we would have to attend a tea party at grandpa’s house and apart from entertaining some extraordinary guests, he would devise some great games for us, such as frog racing in the garden or looking through the lens of a (dissected) sheep’s eye". Sir Ralph Kohn FRS who proposed the Blue plaque, said: "The Nobel Prize winner A. V. Hill contributed vastly to our understanding of muscle physiology. His work has resulted in wide-ranging application in sports medicine. As an outstanding Humanitarian and Parliamentarian, he was uncompromising in his condemnation of the Nazi regime for its persecution of scientists and others. A. V. Hill played a crucial role in assisting and rescuing many refugees to continue their work in this country".[27][28][29]

Publications

By Hill:

References

  1. ^ Jain, C. "Spouse Details added". Archibald V. Hill Biographical.
  2. S2CID 46444782
    .
  3. .
  4. required.)
  5. .
  6. .
  7. ^ Van der Kloot, William (2011). "Mirrors and Smoke: A. V. HILL, His Brigands, and the Science of Anti-Aircraft Gunnery in World War I". Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 25: 393–410.
  8. ^ Van der Kloot, William (2014). Great Scientists wage the Great War. Stroud: Fonthill. pp. 191–214.
  9. PMID 22332470
    .
  10. ^ Jean Medawar; David Pyke (2001). Hitler's gift: scientists who fled Nazi Germany. London: Piatkus. p. 122.
  11. ^ Van der Kloot 2014, p. 202.
  12. ^ Hastings, Max (2011). All Hell let loose: the World at War 1939-45. London: Harper. p. 81.
  13. ^ Hill, A. V. (1965). Trails and Trials in Physiology. London: Edward Arnold.
  14. ^ Katz 1978. p. 133.
  15. .
  16. .
  17. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1922".
  18. S2CID 33768722
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  19. .
  20. ^ "Archibald Vivian Hill". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 9 February 2023. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
  21. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
  22. .
  23. .
  24. ^ Scott, M. Gladys (1978). The Academy Papers. Washington, DC: American Academy of Physical Education and the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education and Recreation. pp. 63–65.
  25. ^ "Archibald Hill". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
  26. ^ Presidential Address to the British Association Meeting, held at Belfast in 1952
  27. ^ "A.V.Hill, Nobel Prize Winner and Sports Medicine Pioneer, receives English Heritage Blue Plaque". Retrieved 8 October 2015.
  28. ^ Rowlinson, Liz (18 September 2015). "Houses stamped with a mark of prestige". Times online. Retrieved 8 October 2015.
  29. ^ Jacoby, Charlie. "Famous homes in north London with many stories". The JC. Retrieved 3 June 2020.

Sources

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Sir Kenneth Pickthorn, Bt.
Sir John Withers
Member of Parliament for
Sir Kenneth Pickthorn, Bt.
Succeeded by
Sir Kenneth Pickthorn, Bt.
Wilson Harris

External links