Hill, Archibald Vivian

Hill, Archibald Vivian,

1886–1977, British physiologist, B.A. Cambridge, 1909. Hill was a professor at Manchester Univ. (1920–23) and University College, London (1923–25) before becoming a research professor of the Royal Society (1926–51). Hill discovered how heat is produced in muscle. While much previous research had focused on the mechanical response and characteristics of muscles, Hill showed that thermal changes are associated with muscle function. By demonstrating that oxygen is involved in only the recovery stage of muscle activity, he laid the foundation for understanding the biochemical reactions that result in muscle contraction. He shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Otto Fritz MeyerhofMeyerhof, Otto
, 1884–1951, American physiologist, b. Germany, M.D. Heidelberg, 1909. He was professor at the Univ. of Kiel (1912–24) and at the Univ. of Berlin and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Medical Research at Heidelberg (1929–38).
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 for his work.

Hill, Archibald Vivian

 

Born Sept. 26, 1886, in Bristol, England. British physiologist. Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1918; secretary, 1935–45).

Hill graduated from Cambridge University in 1907. From 1914 to 1919 he taught physical chemistry at Cambridge University and physiology at the University of Manchester. He was a professor of physiology at the University of Manchester from 1920 to 1923 and at University College in London from 1923 to 1925. In 1946 he joined the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (president, from 1963).

Hill’s principal works are devoted to the thermodynamics of muscular activity and the mechanism of muscle contraction. He improved the thermoelectric method of measuring the temperature in muscles and designed several precise instruments to study heat production in nerves and muscles. He introduced the concepts of oxygen debt and steady state to characterize the relationship between oxygen consumption and the removal of decomposition products in muscles. Hill shared a Nobel Prize in 1922 with O. Meyerhof.

WORKS

Adventures in Biophysics. Philadelphia-London, 1931.
Muscular Activity. Baltimore, 1926. (In Russian translation: Rabota myshts. Moscow-Leningrad, 1929.)
Epizody iz oblasti biofiziki. Moscow-Leningrad, 1935.
Mekhanika myshechnogo sokrashcheniia: Starye i novye opyty. Moscow, 1972.

A. S. BATUEV