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To many Fellowswho attended our meetings during the 1940s and 1950s Bradford Hill personified the Society, for he could have been seen on the platform at almost every Ordinary Meeting, as Honorary Secretary during the period 1940-50and President 1950-52.The Society was dear to his heart, and he would have been pleased to be recognized by some only as a key figure in its organization.But to anyone involved in medical statistics, epidemiology or public health Bradford Hill was quite simply the world's leading medical statistician.His position was universally recognized and unchallenged.Austin Bradford Hill was born in Hampstead, London, on July 8th, 1897, son of Sir Leonard Erskine Hill, FRS, a distinguished physiologist.Bradford Hill's son David recalls a family story that as the parents had already had two boys they had only girls' names ready, so Leonard started to search through a book of names but wearied by the time he reached 'Austin'.Whether or not this is true, 'Austin' never stuck, and he was known throughout his life as 'Tony'.He adopted the regular use of 'Bradford' in later life, to avoid confusion with the physiologist A. V. Hill.Hill's childhood was spent at Loughton, Essex, and he attended Chigwell School.He served as a pilot during the First World War, in the Royal Naval Air Service, but while in the Mediterranean he contracted tuberculosis and was invalided out and given a 100070 disability pension.In later life he was very proud of his status as (presumably) the longest survivor with such a pension.His two years in hospital and a further two years' convalescence put paid to his ambitions to take a medical qualification, so he took a London University degree in economics by correspondence.His deep interest in medicine drew him, in 1922, into service with the Industrial Fatigue (later Health) Research Board, a body associated with the Medical Research Council (MRC).Here he worked with Major Greenwood at the MRC laboratories at Hampstead.He improved his knowledge of statistics by attending Karl Pearson's lectures at University College.When Greenwood accepted the Chair of Epidemiology and Vital Statistics at the newly formed London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 1927, Hill moved with him, first as an MRC employee and then, from 1933, as Reader in Epidemiology and Vital Statistics.His research during this interwar period covered a widerange of epidemiologicalwork, including important studies on the health of cotton workers, printers, bus workers and other occupational groups.He was an outstandingly successful lecturer in postgraduate courses at the School and elsewhere, and in 1937 he published a remarkable series of papers in the Lancet, on 'Principles of medical statistics', which were immediately reprinted in book form.This book, a model of lucid, non-technical exposition, remained in print until the ninth edition in 1971 and reappeared in 1977 under the new title A Short Textbook of Medical Statistics.A new (12th) edition will appear shortly, with the Principles title reinstated and under joint authorship with I. D. Hill.During the 1939-45 war Hill served first in the Ministry of Home Security and then in the medical directorate of the Royal Air Force (RAF), working on problems of night vision, among other topics.In 1947 he was appointed Professor of Medical Statistics at the LSHTM, and Honorary Director of the MRC Statistical Research
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