My brother Harold Hillman, who has died aged 85, was a biological scientist whose research had application in resuscitation, animal slaughter, execution techniques and the use of electric stun guns. He found that the lives of people and animals, such as newborn calves, could be saved with a device similar to the one used to inflate airbeds, and that a lethal injection rather than the electric chair was a more “humane” method of execution.
He repeatedly challenged the orthodox scientific community in its interpretations of the effects on cell structures of extracting, dehydrating and staining under the electron microscope. In the book The Living Cell (1980), which Harold wrote with Peter Sartory, he argued that the technique resulted in fundamental changes to the cells themselves, and was thus unreliable, a view rejected by most of his peers, and for which he paid a high price in career terms.
Harold was uncompromisingly and intellectually honest, dedicated to leading a life based on principle and driven by a strong moral compass that affected everyone he met. Its origins lay in his upbringing by our mother, Annie, a GP who saw her responsibility to her sick patients as overriding that to her children. Its manifestation was revealed in every aspect of his life – his family, his humanist philosophy (he met his wife, Elizabeth, a teacher of deaf people, at a Humanist Society party in 1973), his abhorrence of capitalism and his commitment to exposing institutional corruption, the diminution of academic freedom, cover-ups of discreditable research, loss of human rights and abuse of animal welfare. He was a vegan and refused to wear leather shoes.
Born in London, Harold was the second of three sons of Annie (nee Rabinowitz) and David Hillman, a stained-glass artist. After qualifying at Middlesex hospital medical school in 1956, he worked in general practice while obtaining degrees in physiology at University College London, and a PhD in biochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. His subsequent professional life was largely based at Surrey University, first as reader in physiology, and later as founder and director of the Unity Laboratory of Applied Neurobiology. He wrote six books and published more than 150 papers on various subjects related to his research.
He played an active part in many organisations and societies, including the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (now Freedom from Torture), the Council for Academic Freedom and Academic Standards, Freedom to Care, and the Association of University Teachers. He was a founding member of Amnesty International and founding editor of Resuscitation, the official journal of the European Resuscitation Council.
Harold is survived by Elizabeth, their children, Alexander, Rachel, Benedict and Sophia, four grandchildren, and me.