1. Walter S. Hill, “Entrega título de Profesor Ad-Honorem, palabras del Decano interventor Alfredo De Santiago,” Colección Walter Hill. Archivo, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay (hereafter CWH), 1975.
2. Revista de la Facultad de Ingeniería, Profesor “Ad Honorem” Ing. Walter S. Hill (Montevideo, junio, 1975).
3. An example of this information gap can be seen in an article published in 2000: Ramón Ménez Galain, “La Física uruguaya: una historia reciente,” in Encontro de História da Ciencia, ed. Antonio A. P. Videira and Anibal G. Babiloni (Río de Janeiro: CBPF, 2001).
4. A summary of Hill’s life an output can be found on the Historias Universitarias website (http://historiasuniversitarias.edu.uy/biografia/hill-walter/). The absence of sources prevents us from filling in Hill’s formative years in more detail. We were unable to find any information about his motivations for choosing engineering or whether he had a teacher or relative who influenced him and his commitment to physics.
5. The comparative merit competition is the method used in Uruguay for selecting civil servants, and involves the appraisal of the applicants’ résumés and selection of the most meritorious.