William George Hill

William George “Bill” Hill OBE FRS FRSE (born 7 August 1940) is an English geneticist and statistician.He is professor emeritus at University of Edinburgh since his retirement in 2002.

Hill was educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire and studied Agriculture at Wye College, University of London graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1961. He studied Genetics at the University of California, Davis graduating with a Master of Science degree in 1963, then moved to Edinburgh to pursue a PhD in population genetics with Alan Robertson. He was awarded aDoctor of Science degree in 1976 for research on quantitative genetics.

Hill distinguished for his theoretical contributions to the study of the population and quantitative genetics of finite populations, in particular with respect to multilocus problems. He was the first to present formulae for the expected association of linked genes in finite populations due to random sampling of gametes and for the estimation of these associations from genotype frequencies. He has made major contributions to the analysis of quantitative variation in random breeding populations, both in the design and interpretation of selection experiments and in the analysis of similarity between relatives. He has applied these concepts in his own selection experiments in the laboratory and in farm animal improvement programmes.

Hill served as editor in chief of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B from 2005 to 2009.

Awards and honours

Hill was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1979, a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1985 and appointed OBE in 2004.

In 2018 he was awarded The Royal Society's Darwin Medal for his contribution to our understanding of the genetics of quantitative traits and response to selection.

In 2019 he was awarded The Genetics Society's Mendel Medal at The Centenary of Genetics Conference, for his contribution to quantitative genetics.