£39m Research centre honours Manchester Nobel Laureate
June 2009
The University has officially opened the AV Hill Building, an award-winning £39M research centre that will make Manchester home to one of the largest biomedical complexes in Europe.
The AV Hill Building will house 300 scientists in 50 research groups, mainly focussing on neuroscience and immunology, from Faculty of Life Sciences and Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences.
The 6000 sq metre facility connects the Core Technology Facility, Michael Smith and Stopford Buildings, thus creating a linked complex housing more than 300 research groups. The complex is adjacent to the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility and the Central Manchester and Manchester Children’s University Hospitals NHS Trust and is therefore sited at a focal point in the University's 'biomedical corridor'.
The building is named after Archibald Vivian Hill, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine while he held the Chair in Physiology at the University of Manchester. Professor Hill shared the 1922 Nobel Prize with Otto Fritz Meyerhof for work on the generation of heat by muscles.
One of the pioneering physiologists of the 20th Century, AV Hill made outstanding contributions in the field of muscle physiology and was regarded as one of the founders of Biophysics. In the 1930s he played a leading role in the establishment of the Academic Assistance Council (AAC), later to be known as the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL), which rescued many German refugee academics from Nazi persecution and provided employment and financial support. During the Second World War, he accepted an invitation to stand for Parliament representing Cambridge University, and used his considerable influence in support of many worthy causes.
The building – opened by AV Hill's grandson Professor Nicholas Humphrey and University alumnus Dr Ralph Kohn - recently won the Best Corporate Workplace in the North regional heat of the British Council for Offices awards and will compete in the final in October.
Professor Humphrey said: “My grandfather loved laboratories. But he could never have imagined a lab of this magnificence!”
Dr Kohn said: “I am deeply honoured to officially open the building named after such a great man as AV Hill, who was an outstanding physiologist, humanitarian and parliamentarian, together with his grandson Professor Nicholas Humphrey.”
The Deans of FLS and FMHS Professor Martin Humphries and Professor Alan North said: “This facility will further enhance the major programme of biomedical research established in Manchester over the past ten years.
“The operations group behind its design spent eighteen months considering not only how this building will operate, but also how the 'biomedical corridor' – incorporating the teaching hospitals – can be better integrated. Benefits include the clustering of core equipment, easily accessible resources for researchers and enhanced opportunities for collaboration.”