Portrait of William Hill

Seated portrait of William Hill, taken at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, where he is Professor Emeritus.

Professor William Hill, geneticist and statistician, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985 and served on its Council between 1993 and 1994. He is distinguished for his theoretical contributions to the study of the population and quantitative genetics of finite populations, in particular with respect to multilocus problems.

Hill 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, and has applied these concepts in his own selection experiments and in farm animal improvement programmes.

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.