Ian George Wilson Hill was born in Edinburgh, where he studied medicine at the University, graduating with distinction in 1928. In 1932 a Rockefeller Travelling Scholarship enabled him to work in the USA at the ‘Heart Station’ in Michigan, alongside the pioneer of electrocardiography, Frank Wilson. Hill and Wilson’s joint publications in the 1930s laid the foundations for the analysis of ECG patterns in infarction (heart attacks). On returning to Scotland after the war, Hill introduced the unipolar lead system that he had helped Wilson develop, enabling a significant advancement of electrocardiography. Hill’s original leads still survive and are in the collection of the Tayside Medical History Museum. In 1950 Hill was appointed Professor of Medicine in Dundee and continued his interests in cardiology until his retiral in 1969.