Albert G. Hill

Who was Albert G. Hill?

Professor Albert G. Hill, a physicist, was a key leader in the development of radar in WWII, director of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory development of the electronic Distant Early Warning and SAGE continental air defense systems, and first chairman of The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. He died in 1996.

Dr. Hill was born in St. Louis on Jan. 11, 1910. In 1930 he received the BS in mechanical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis and, after serving two years with Bell Telephone Laboratories, an MS in physics. He received the PhD in physics from the University of Rochester in 1937.

He was an instructor in physics at MIT from 1937 to 1941, when he became a staff member of the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, which was developing radar for use in World War II. Hill headed the Radio Frequency Group in the Transmitter Components division and by the end of the war was chief of the 800-person division. After the war he became associate director of the newly formed Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, and was promoted in 1949 to its director.

Lincoln Lab was formed in 1951 at the request of the government, and Dr.