Archibald Vivian Hill, 26 September, 1886 - 3 June 1977

Abstract

A. V. Hill was born in Bristol, the son of Jonathan Hill (1857-1924) and Ada Priscilla ( née Rumney ) (1861-1943). The father was the second of nine children; the mother one of four sisters. They were married in 1880, and had a son and a daughter, Muriel, who was born in February 1889. She became a biochemist and married Dr T. S. Hele, a colleague who worked in the same field and was later elected Master of Emmanuel College,Cambridge. Muriel died in 1941. A. V. (as he became known to his family and all his colleagues) traced his ancestry to the middle of the eighteenth century. To judge by the family tree which he himself drew, the name ‘Archibald Vivian' must have been a new departure. There were successions of Jameses and Jonathans, several Johns, an occasional Charles, George, Samuel, etc. among them, but apparently no precedent for Archibald or Vivian. A. V.’s forebears all lived in the West Country, mostly in Devonshire and Somerset. On the paternal side he was preceded by five generations of timber merchants at Bristol, carrying on the business which had been founded by James Hill in 1750. James had come from Ireland and later returned there to join a volunteer regiment. He is believed to have been killed during the Irish troubles.