About Archibald Hill
Archibald Vivian Hill (26 September 1886 – 3 June 1977), better known to friends and colleagues as A. V. Hill, was a British physiologist, one of the founders of the diverse disciplines of biophysics and operations research. He shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his elucidation of the production of heat and mechanical work in muscles. == Biography == === Early life === Born in Bristol, the son of Jonathan Hill (1857–1924) and Ada Priscilla (née Rumney) (1861–1943), he was preceded on the paternal side by five generations of timber merchants at Bristol, carrying on the business which had been founded by James Hill in 1750. He was educated at Blundell's School and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge as third wrangler in the mathematics tripos before turning to physiology. While still an undergraduate at Trinity College, he derived in 1909 what came to be known as the Langmuir equation. This is closely related to Michaelis–Menten kinetics. In this paper, Hill's first publication, he derived both the equilibrium form of the Langmuir equation, and also the exponential approach to equilibrium. The paper, written under the supervision of John Newport Langley, is a landmark in the history of receptor theory, because the context for the derivation was the binding of nicotine and curare to the "receptive substance" at the neuromuscular junction. === Hill equation === In 1910, Hill formulated the Hill equation, which is used to quantify binding of oxygen to haemoglobin, written here as a kinetic equation: v = V a h K 0.5 h + a h {\displaystyle v=V{\frac {a^{h}}{K_{0.5}^{h}+a^{h}}}} Here v {\displaystyle v} is the rate of reaction at concentration a {\displaystyle a} of substrate, V {\displaystyle V} is the rate at saturation, K 0.5 {\displaystyle {K_{0.5}}} is the value of a {\displaystyle a} that gives v = 0.5 V {\displaystyle v=0.5V}, and the exponent h {\displaystyle h} is a parameter that expresses the degree of departure from Michaelis–Menten kinetics: positive cooperativity for h > 1 {\displaystyle h>1}, no cooperativity for h = 1 {\displaystyle h=1}, and negative cooperativity for h < 1 {\displaystyle h<1}. Note that there is no implication that h {\displaystyle h} is an integer, and in most experimental cases, apart from the trivial case of h = 1 {\displaystyle h=1}, it is not.
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