Archibald Hill

Archibald Vivian Hill, known to colleagues as A. V. Hill, was a British physiologist who lived from 1886 to 1977. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge before turning to physiology, and he formulated the Hill equation in 1910 to describe how oxygen binds to haemoglobin. His careful measurements of the heat released when skeletal muscle contracts showed that heat is produced during contraction but not during relaxation. For this work on heat and mechanical work in muscle he shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and he introduced the ideas of maximal oxygen uptake and oxygen debt. He is counted among the founders of biophysics and of operations research, served as an independent Member of Parliament for Cambridge University from 1940 to 1945, and helped found the Academic Assistance Council that aided refugee scholars.