Sidney Montague Hilton

Sidney Montague Hilton was born into a north London Jewish family on 21 March 1921. He died at his home in North Wales in February 2011. He had retired from the Bowman Professorship and Chair of the Department of Physiology in the University of Birmingham in 1983 having been appointed in 1965.

Sidney Hilton was educated at St Paul's School in London from where he gained an Exhibition to study Medical Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge. He completed his clinical studies at Guy's School of Medicine and then held house jobs in Guy's. His was an academically driven family and his younger brother Peter, who died in 2010, was a distinguished mathematician.

Sidney's early career was disturbed by the need to do national service. This was spent in the RAF at the Institute of Aviation Medicine, Farnborough under the direction of Prof. J. Beattie (Royal College of Surgeons). A fellow conscript was Ian Glynn, later Professor of Physiology at Cambridge. Sidney worked on non-invasive techniques to monitor blood oxygen levels. In 1950 he returned to academic life joining Prof. (later Lord) E. D. Adrian's laboratory in Cambridge. There he developed an interest in vascular control (Hilton & Holton, 1954; Hilton, 1953) and was probably heavily influenced by one of Adrian's major contributions of the pre-war years. Adrian had provided experimental evidence from nerve recordings that vasomotor tone was dependent on neurogenic (sympathetic) activity. This association with one of the ‘greats’ of twentieth century physiology clearly influenced Sidney's choice of physiological research as his career and triggered his life-long interest in the mechanisms of cardiovascular control.

The next, and perhaps the most critical, influence was Prof. Wilhelm Feldberg, whose department at the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) was Sidney's next destination. Feldberg had worked with Dale in the 1930s on his move to England from Nazi Germany. He had made numerous contributions both with and independently of Dale in the field of chemical neurotransmission primarily in the autonomic nervous system. He was a brilliant and innovative scientist and his department was full of talented individuals who were to have a major impact on physiology and pharmacology over the next four decades. The culture, scientific and social, of F4 (Division of Physiology and Pharmacology) had a major effect on Sidney's research and subsequently on the way in which he developed his own department in Birmingham.

At NIMR he continued his studies on the control of organ blood flow studying mechanical and chemical control processes. He was particularly interested in explaining the mechanism that was responsible for the vasodilatation in the arterial blood vessels of exercising muscle (Hilton, 1959). He demonstrated the importance of elements in the muscle wall which he considered to be mechanically activated and which resulted in the conduction of vasodilatation throughout the vascular bed. His interpretation of his observations was, however, erroneous. He had unknowingly provided probably the first convincing evidence for the action of nitric oxide as a vasodilator, then unknown but subsequently identified. Also at that time in collaboration with Graham Lewis he studied the inter-relationship between blood flow and secretion in the salivary glands, and identified polypeptides, including bradykinin, as mediators of both secretion and hyperaemia (Hilton & Lewis, 1955a,b). The identification of a role of these polypeptides has significance in other tissues and has also been important in understanding pathological changes in local vascular control.

Whilst he retained an interest in local vascular control his major and lasting contribution was in developing an understanding of CNS mechanisms that generate the cardiovascular responses in the fear, fight or flight reaction – the defence response (Abrahams & Hilton, 1964). Cannon had described the potential physiological significance of affective behaviour and Hess in the 1940s had shown the importance of the hypothalamus in generating this constellation of behavioural changes. Sidney recognised the need to develop both behavioural and physiological approaches to advance knowledge in this field. To learn these skills he visited Prof. Konorski at the Nencki Institute in Warsaw, who as a pupil of Pavlov was an expert in behavioural studies. Not only did he benefit from this tuition but he also began a collaboration with Andrzej Zbrozyna, who he subsequently persuaded to join him first in NIMR and then in Birmingham. In NIMR together with Viv Abrahams they described the pattern of response that could be evoked by electrical stimulation in specific loci in the amygdala, hypothalamus and midbrain and showed that in the conscious animal stimulation elicited all the behavioural features of the defence response (Hilton & Zbrozyna, 1963; Abrahams et al. 1960, 1962). The response was characterised by a widespread vasoconstriction but a vasodilatation in skeletal muscle – a preparatory response to support the behavioural response since it was accompanied by a marked rise in cardiac output. The majority of this work was published in The Journal of Physiology. Sidney also demonstrated that eliciting the defence response also modulated cardiovascular and respiratory reflexes (Coote et al. 1979) but unravelling the neuronal mechanism was not achieved until studies by others in London some 20 years later. These studies reinforced his view that the CNS developed patterns of autonomic activity as components of behavioural responses and that these autonomic signatures were important in elucidating the underlying networks that generated behaviour (Hilton & Spyer, 1980).

Sidney moved to Birmingham in 1965 and began immediately to revitalise a moribund and depleted Department. Over the next years the department grew in size and reputation. He was supported by senior appointments such as John Wolstencroft and Peter Rack and younger faculty, John Coote and others. Zbrozyna also acted as an emissary in assisting Sidney's second wife, Gerta Vrbova, to escape with her two daughters to the west via Poland from the Soviet dominated Czechoslovakia. Gerta contributed to the intellectual life of the department in a significant way even if her original appointment was in the Department of Anatomy.

The Department developed a broad research base with an emphasis on neuroscience and several research students were enthused by the stimulating and vibrant environment that had been engendered partly through the success of his recruitments. Sidney with support from the MRC built a strong research group continuing his interests in CNS control of cardiovascular function. This became the leading centre in the UK and Europe for this field of investigation and Sidney enjoyed nothing more than collaborating with research groups in Sweden (Folkow), Germany (Koepchen, Seller) and Poland (Trzebski). He was a popular and provocative participant in international symposia but grew more and more distant from the laboratory. His forceful personality was not always endearing to members of either the Department or the Faculty and he was not seen as an easy colleague by heads of other Departments. However, many of the students and academic recruits developed major careers either in Birmingham or in other Universities.

He also served The Physiological Society as a Committee member and Honorary Secretary. His forceful and often irreverent character had the ability to forge strong collaborations between senior members of The Society from Oxford and Cambridge although these alliances often disagreed profoundly with Sidney's aspirations for The Society. Nonetheless he remained a provocative member of The Society and scientific sessions were never dull if Sidney was present. He had always demanded that presentations to The Society from his department were exhaustively rehearsed before the meeting and his editing of submissions to The Journal from his Department was demanding if often excruciatingly slow! His negative qualities were tempered by a mischievous sense of humour and a genuine love of literature, music, food and wine.

On retirement in 1984 he moved with his third wife, Mary, to a rural home in North Wales. He abandonned academic interests, much to the loss of those who enjoyed his contributions to scientific debate and the importance of his early contributions. He was made an Honorary Member of the Society in 2004. He had suffered with renal failure for some months and died peacefully but before his 90th birthday, which he had been looking forward to celebrating. He is survived by his third wife and children and grandchildren from previous marriages