Medicine: 1922

1) Hill, Sir Archibald Vivian (1886-1977), was an English biologist who studied how muscles contract during movement and exercise. For this research, he shared the 1922 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with German biologist Otto Meyerhof. Hill contributed to the development of biophysics, the field of biology that applies the tools and techniques of physics to study life processes.

Experimenting with frogs, Hill used a sensitive device called a thermopile to show that heat is produced when muscles contract. He was able to measure changes in temperature less than 0.005 degree Fahrenheit (0.003 degree Celsius). These changes lasted only a few hundredths of a second in individual muscle fibers. Hill and other scientists then could calculate the exact chemical reactions that take place to produce muscle contraction.

When muscles work, oxygen is combined with food to supply the energy needed for contraction. This process produces heat and lactic acid, a waste product, that builds up in the muscle tissue and causes fatigue. The lactic acid disappears as muscles recover during rest. Hill demonstrated that oxygen is also used to eliminate lactic acid during this recovery phase. Hill used the term oxygen debt to explain the heavy breathing of athletes after intense activity, such as running a race. Runners build up so much lactic acid that they must continue to breath hard many minutes after a race to get enough oxygen for their muscles to recover quickly.

Hill was born in Bristol. He studied mathematics and physiology (the science of bodily functions) at Cambridge University, graduating in 1909. During World War I (1914-1918), he served in the British Army and helped design and improve antiaircraft weapons. He was a professor at Manchester University from 1920 to 1923. He then became professor of physiology and biophysics at University College in London. In the 1930's, Hill helped found the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, an organization that helped Jewish scientists in Germany escape Nazi oppression. He was knighted in 1918.

2) Meyerhof, Otto Fritz (1884-1951), a German-born biochemist, shared the 1922 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with the English physiologist Sir Archibald Hill. Meyerhof was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research into the consumption of oxygen by muscles, and the relationship of oxygen use to the conversion of lactic acid (a chemical produced in the body by muscular activity) and carbohydrates within the muscle. Hill was honored for his discovery relating to the production of heat in the muscle. Meyerhof also studied the effects of different chemicals on oxidation processes (chemical reactions in which a substance loses electrons).

Meyerhof was born in Hanover, Germany. In 1909, he received his M.D. degree from the University of Heidelberg. In 1912, he moved to Kiel where, from 1918 he held the position of assistant professor at the local university. In 1924, he moved to Berlin to work for the Kaiser Wilhelm (now the Max Planck) Society. In 1929, he took charge of the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm (now the Max Planck) Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. In 1938, he decided to leave Germany and went to Paris for two years, where he worked at the Institut de Biologie Physico-chimique.

In 1940, he immigrated to the United States. From 1940 to 1951, he was research professor of physiological chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He became a U.S. citizen in 1946.