Sir
Leonard Erskine Hill (28 January 1858 - 30 March 1952) was a British physiologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1900. His son was the epidemiologist and statistician
Austin Bradford HillSir Austin Bradford Hill FRS , English epidemiologist and statistician, pioneered the randomized clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, was the first to demonstrate the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer....
.
Sir Leonard Erskine Hill attended
Haileybury CollegeHaileybury and Imperial Service College, , is a British independent school founded in 1862. It is a co-educational boarding school enrolling pupils at 11+, 13+ and 16+. Over 750 pupils go to Haileybury, of which 452 live at Haileybury for either week nights or for an entire half term...
. He later received his MB from
University College, LondonUniversity College London is a British university institution and a constituent college of the University of London, based primarily in Bloomsbury, London...
in 1890. In 1931, he received an honorary LLD from
University of AberdeenThe University of Aberdeen is an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is the fifth oldest university in what is now the United Kingdom, and in the wider English-speaking world....
.
Hill's work on blood pressure lead him to believe "the arterial pressure can be taken in man as rapidly, simply, and accurately as the temperature can be taken with the clinical thermometer".
Sir
Leonard Erskine Hill (28 January 1858 - 30 March 1952) was a British physiologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1900. His son was the epidemiologist and statistician
Austin Bradford HillSir Austin Bradford Hill FRS , English epidemiologist and statistician, pioneered the randomized clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, was the first to demonstrate the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer....
.
Education
Sir Leonard Erskine Hill attended
Haileybury CollegeHaileybury and Imperial Service College, , is a British independent school founded in 1862. It is a co-educational boarding school enrolling pupils at 11+, 13+ and 16+. Over 750 pupils go to Haileybury, of which 452 live at Haileybury for either week nights or for an entire half term...
. He later received his MB from
University College, LondonUniversity College London is a British university institution and a constituent college of the University of London, based primarily in Bloomsbury, London...
in 1890. In 1931, he received an honorary LLD from
University of AberdeenThe University of Aberdeen is an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is the fifth oldest university in what is now the United Kingdom, and in the wider English-speaking world....
.
Medicine
Hill's work on blood pressure lead him to believe "the arterial pressure can be taken in man as rapidly, simply, and accurately as the temperature can be taken with the clinical thermometer". This work developed into the Hill's sign.
Diving medicine
Hill performed research into
decompression sicknessDecompression sickness describes a condition arising from the precipitation of dissolved gasses into bubbles inside the body on depressurisation...
,
oxygen toxicityOxygen toxicity is a condition resulting from the harmful effects of breathing molecular oxygen at elevated partial pressures. It is also known as oxygen toxicity syndrome, oxygen intoxication, and oxygen poisoning...
, and effects of
carbon dioxideCarbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state...
in
divingUnderwater diving is the practice of going underwater, either with breathing apparatus or by breath-holding .Recreational diving is a popular activity...
.
Hill advocated linear or uniform
decompression profilesA dive profile is a two dimensional graphical representation of a dive showing depth and time. It is useful as an indication of the risks of decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity and the consumption of open-circuit gas for a planned dive as these depend in part upon depth and time...
. This type of decompression is used today by
saturation diversSaturation diving is a diving technique that allows divers to remain at great depth for long periods of time."Saturation" refers to the fact that the diver's tissues have absorbed the maximum partial pressure of gas possible for that depth due to the diver being exposed to breathing gas at that...
. His work was financed by
Augustus SiebeAugustus Siebe was a German-born British engineer chiefly known for his contributions to diving equipment.Born in Saxony in 1788, little is known of his early years. He learned metalworking in Berlin and served as an artillery officer in the Prussian army at the Battle of Waterloo...
and the
Siebe Gorman CompanySiebe Gorman & Company Ltd was a British company which developed diving equipment and breathing equipment and worked on commercial diving and marine salvage projects...
.
Other interests
Hill was a distinguished watercolourist and also wrote children's stories. He was fond of the outdoor life, and went every day to bathe in a pond in
Epping ForestEpping Forest is an area of ancient parkland in south-east England, straddling the border between north-east Greater London and Essex. It is a former royal forest, and is managed by the City of London Corporation....
at
LoughtonLoughton is a town and civil parish in the Epping Forest district of Essex. It is located between 11 and 13 miles north east of Charing Cross in London, south of the M25 and west of the M11 motorway and has boundaries with Chingford, Buckhurst Hill, Theydon Bois, Waltham Abbey, and Chigwell...
where he lived. He later moved to
HampsteadHampstead is an area of London, England, located north-west of Charing Cross. It is located within Inner London. It is part of the London Borough of Camden. It is known for its intellectual, artistic, musical and literary associations and for the large and hilly parkland Hampstead Heath...
.
External links