Ian George Wilson Hill

Sir Ian George Wilson Hill CBE FRSE FRCP TD LLD (1904-1982) was a Scottish military surgeon. He was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1963 to 1966 and the official Physician to the Queen in Scotland. He was Chairman of the British Cardiac Society.

Life

He was born in Shotts on 7 September 1904 the son of Andrew Wilson Hill, a banker, and his wife, Jean Robertson Malcolm. His early years were spent in South Uist where he acquired a love of nature and fly-fishing in particular. His family then moved to Edinburgh where he was educated at George Watson's College. He studied Medicine at Edinburgh University under Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer and William Thomas Ritchie, graduating MB ChB with honours in 1928 and winning the Ettles Scholarship for that year, plus a Rockefeller Travelling Scholarship. With the latter he travelled to Ann Arbor, Michigan to work with the leading electrocardiologist Frank N Wilson. He then spent time in Vienna working with Karl Wenckebach, where his fluent German proved invaluable.

In 1933 he began lecturing in medicine at Aberdeen University under Sir Stanley Davidson, moving to Edinburgh University in 1937 to lecture in Therapeutics under Derrick Dunlop. As with most, his career was disrupted by the Second World War. As a Territorial Army volunteer his call-up was immediate at the onset of war. He served in the Middle East, Burma and India, rising to the rank of Brigadier by 1945. He was Consultant Physician to the 14th Army and the Allied Land Forces in SE Asia. He was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his wartime services.^[1]

He returned to Scotland in 1947 as Assistant Physician in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, simultaneously acting as Consultant Physician at the Deaconess Hospital. He also had a lucrative private consultancy. Despite this he returned to academia in 1950, accepting the position as Professor of Medicine at St Andrews University (based in Dundee), replacing Prof Adam Patrick. In 1948 he had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were David Murray Lyon, Douglas Guthrie, William Frederick Harvey and Sir Ernest Wedderburn.^[2]

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1966. Dundee University awarded him an honorary doctorate (LLD) in 1970, just after his retiral.

He continued to work, acting as visiting professor in the University of Teheran in Iran and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the Haile Selassie I University of Ethiopia.^[3]

He died at home on 5 May 1982 at Priors Croft, Nethergate in Crail, Fife.

Family

He married twice: in 1933 to Ellen Audrey Lavender (d.1966), a nurse he met at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, who rose to be Lady Hill, and in 1968 to Anna Hill. He had a daughter and son by his first marriage. His son Alasdair Hill became a QC.

References