Archibald Hill
Archibald Vivian Hill | |
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Notes | |
He is notably the father of Polly Hill, David Keynes Hill, Maurice Hill, and the grandfather of Nicholas Humphrey. |
Archibald Vivian Hill
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
While a student he had enrolled in the
At the end of 1915, while home on leave he was asked by
In 1923 he succeeded
In 1935 he served with
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
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
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
- Officer of the Order of the British Empire (1918)
- Fellow of the Royal Society (1918)
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1922)
- In 1926 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Nerves and Muscles: How We Feel and Move.
- International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1934)[20]
- International Member of the American Philosophical Society (1938)[21]
- Associate Fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology (1938)[22][23][24]
- International Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1941)[25]
- Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour(1946)
- Copley Medal of the Royal Society (1948)
- President of the British Association (1952)[26]
Blue plaque
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:
- Gray, C. H. (1947). "The significance of the van den Bergh reaction". The Quarterly Journal of Medicine. 16 (63): 135–142. PMID 20263725.
- Hill, A. V.; Long, C. N. H.; Lupton, H. (1924). "Muscular Exercise, Lactic Acid, and the Supply and Utilisation of Oxygen". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 96 (679): 438–475. .
- Hill, A.V. (1924–25). Textbook of Anti-Aircraft Gunnery, 2 vols
- Hill, A. V. (1926). "The scientific study of athletics". .
- Muscular Activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1926a. ISBN 978-0-8493-5494-6.
- Muscular Activity: Herter Lectures – Sixteenth Course. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Company. 1926b.
- - (1927a). Muscular Movement in Man
- - (1927b). Living Machinery
- Hill, A. V. (1928). "Myothermic apparatus". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 103 (723): 117–137. .
- Adventures in Biophysics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1931.
- - (1932) Chemical Wave Transmission in Nerve
- The Ethical Dilemma of Science, and Other Writings. New York: Rockefeller Institute Press. 1960.
- Trails and Trials in Physiology: A Bibliography, 1909–1964; with reviews of certain topics and methods and a reconnaissance for further research. London: Arnold. 1965.
References
- ^ Jain, C. "Spouse Details added". Archibald V. Hill Biographical.
- S2CID 46444782.
- S2CID 14704104.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31230. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- PMID 16992989.
- .
- ^ 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.
- ^ Van der Kloot, William (2014). Great Scientists wage the Great War. Stroud: Fonthill. pp. 191–214.
- PMID 22332470.
- ^ Jean Medawar; David Pyke (2001). Hitler's gift: scientists who fled Nazi Germany. London: Piatkus. p. 122.
- ^ Van der Kloot 2014, p. 202.
- ^ Hastings, Max (2011). All Hell let loose: the World at War 1939-45. London: Harper. p. 81.
- ^ Hill, A. V. (1965). Trails and Trials in Physiology. London: Edward Arnold.
- ^ Katz 1978. p. 133.
- ISBN 978-3-527-33074-4.
- S2CID 46444782.
- ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1922".
- S2CID 33768722.
- PMID 9140894.
- ^ "Archibald Vivian Hill". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 9 February 2023. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
- .
- .
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Archibald Hill". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
- ^ Presidential Address to the British Association Meeting, held at Belfast in 1952
- ^ "A.V.Hill, Nobel Prize Winner and Sports Medicine Pioneer, receives English Heritage Blue Plaque". Retrieved 8 October 2015.
- ^ Rowlinson, Liz (18 September 2015). "Houses stamped with a mark of prestige". Times online. Retrieved 8 October 2015.
- ^ Jacoby, Charlie. "Famous homes in north London with many stories". The JC. Retrieved 3 June 2020.
Sources
- Lusk, G. (1925). Lectures on nutrition: 1924–1925. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company.
- Medawar, Jean: Pyke, David (2012). Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled by the Nazi Regime (Paperback). New York: Arcade Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61145-709-4.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - Stevenson, L.G. (1953). Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine and Physiology: 1901–1950. New York: Henry Schuman.
- Archibald V. Hill on Nobelprize.org
External links
- The Papers of A. V. Hill held at Churchill Archives Centre