Over four decades, my father, Kit Hill, who has died aged 94, worked to develop the use of ultrasound in medicine, from the earliest hand-built scanners with little computing power to much higher levels of sophistication. He and his team at the combined Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and the Royal Marsden Hospital in London have also investigated the biological impact and potential for risk of ultrasound exposure and developed safe codes of practice for global application.
Kit’s career at the ICR began in 1957 when he was a PhD student mapping the concentration of radionuclides in plants, livestock and human organs following nuclear bomb testing and power plant failures. During a visit to Kit’s laboratory, Sir Ernest Marsden, who worked with Sir Ernest Rutherford, was fascinated by the alpha particle spectrometer that Kit had built from “bits and bobs”.
From 1958 to 1994, as a student, through research and teaching, and beyond when he became professor and head of the combined physics department of the ICR and Royal Marsden, Kit placed great value on collaboration and the nurturing of individuals. He fostered international friendship by welcoming students, colleagues and visitors to the family home for simple, tasty meals, and good conversation would follow.
Born in Carshalton, Surrey, Kit (Christopher) was one of four children of Margery (née Taylor), a PE teacher before her marriage, and daughter of optical instrument engineer William Taylor, and Henry Hill, a industrial chemist. Kit went to Leighton Park Quaker School, Reading, and studied physics at Oxford, where he met Susan Maguire, whom he married in 1953.
Childhood bath times for me and my three siblings were rich in scientific exploration, from pouring and measuring, through swinging and sinking and relative density, to the patterns in bubbles, all of which had obvious relevance (although none of us realized it at the time) after his work in ultrasound.
With retirement approaching, and looking for “what next”, Kit got involved Pugwash conferences on science and world affairs, soon became treasurer and then secretary. In this role he joined Sir Joseph Rotblatpresident and founder of Pugwash, traveling to Oslo to receive the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for the conferences’ efforts “to reduce the role that nuclear weapons play in international politics and, in the longer term, to eliminate such weapons” .
Kit hoped he could leave the world a better place. He played his part.
Susan passed away in 2017. Kit is survived by his children, Catherine, Mark, David and me, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, and his sister Janet.
