Archibald Hill

Archibald Vivian Hill (1886 to 1977), better known as A. V. Hill, was a British physiologist and one of the founders of biophysics and operations research. He shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Fritz Meyerhof for elucidating the production of heat and mechanical work in muscles. Born in Bristol, he graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge as third wrangler in the mathematics tripos before turning to physiology, and in 1910 formulated the Hill equation for the binding of oxygen to haemoglobin. During the First World War he led the Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section, nicknamed Hill's Brigands. He held the chair of physiology at the Victoria University of Manchester from 1920 and from 1923 was professor of physiology at University College London, where he remained until 1951, and he introduced the concepts of maximal oxygen uptake and oxygen debt.