For other people names Robert Hill, see the disambiguation page Robert Hill. Robin Hill is also the name given to varieties of azalea bred by Robert Derby Gartrell.
In 1922 he joined the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge where he was directed to research haemoglobin. He published a number of papers on haemoglobin, and in 1926 he began to work with David Kellin on the haem containing proteincytochrome c. In 1932 he commenced work on plant biochemistry, focusing on photosynthesis and the oxygen evolution of chloroplasts, leading to the discovery of the 'Hill reaction'.
From 1943 Hill's work was funded by the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), although he remained working in the Cambridge Biochemistry Department. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1946. Hill continued to receive most recognition for his work on photosynthesis and from the late 1950s his work concentrated on the energetics of photosynthesis. Working with Fay Bendall he made his second great contribution to photosynthesis research. In 1960 Bendall and Hill discovered the 'Z scheme' of electron transport. He was awarded the Royal Medal in 1963, and the Copley Medal in 1987.
Hill retired from the ARC in 1966, although his research at Cambridge continued until his death in 1991. In his later years Hill worked on the issue of the application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to photosynthesis.
He was an expert on natural dyes and grew plants such as madder and woad. He painted watercolours using pigments he had extracted himself. [1] In the 1920s he developed a fish-eye camera and used it to take stereoscopic whole-sky images, recording cloud patterns in three dimensions.
