Robert Hill, 2 April 1899 - 15 March 1991

Abstract

Robert Hill will always be remembered for his fundamental contributions to the study of photosynthesis, but his originality in the scientific sphere was the reflection of an unusual personality, which will not be so easily remembered without a written record. He was almost invariably known affectionately as Robin, by family, friends and colleagues alike, although his closest friends tended to address him simply as Hill, in the pre-war manner. The scientific outlook was a deep seated part of Robin’s nature, but he was also an artist and craftsman. The different aspects of his life merged into one another with no sharp distinctions. He was trained primarily as a chemist, but in the inter-war years he was one of the pioneers who applied chemical skills and insight in attempts to understand living things, and thus established biochemistry on a sound basis as an independent discipline. His great love was for plants. At the old farm in Barton where he made his home, he grew all the plants needed for his experimental work in the laboratory. For Robin Hill this meant growing any plant with some particular biochemical interest. Among them were the traditional dye plants, such as madder and woad, and he became a well known expert in the chemistry of the natural dyes. Plants and landscapes were the usual subjects of his watercolour sketches. Some of these could be seen hanging in the house, but he was too modest to explain to visitors that he had not only painted the pictures but had also made the pigments himself. He spent the whole of his working life in Cambridge. He had a highly individual lecturing style which could occasionally verge on the histrionic, but his shyness came to dominate. He would stand with his attache case open on the bench in front of him, spectacles cocked on his forehead, and from time to time would duck down, for protection from the audience, as it were. These antics were amusing but distracting, and may partly explain why he never achieved a university appointment. He existed on a series of fellowships until he was eventually rescued by the Agricultural Research Council, and taken on to their external staff in 1943.