--- Physiologist A. V. Hill, quoted by his grandson Nicholas Humphrey, "How did consciousness evolve?," Royal Institution lecture, Sep 21, 2023, at 1:13
From the video
His field was biophysics. Mine is psychophysics, verging on metaphysics. Grandpa Hill was a down to earth a scientist as they come. He once gave me his definition of metaphysics. "Metaphysics," he said, "is the art of bamboozling people methodically."
Judging by the Wikipedia entry, Hill was amazing:
- He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge as third wrangler in the mathematics tripos.
- In his very first publication (1909), while still an undergraduate, he derived what became known as the Languir equation (1918).
- He was a crack shot.
- During a home leave in WW I in 1915, he proposed a two-mirror method to determine planes' heights and then assembled a team to calculate the required data tables.
- He shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- In 1935 he served with Patrick Blackett and Sir Henry Tizard on the committee that gave birth to radar.
