Hamilton HartridgeFRS (7 May 1886 – 13 January 1976) was a British eye physiologist and medical writer.[1] Known for his ingenious experimentation and instrument construction abilities, he designed what is called the Hartridge Reversion Spectrometer.[2] This was used for pioneering studies on haemoglobin oxygen-binding studies.
Education and early career
Hartridge was educated at Harrow and King's College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow from 1912 to 1926. He graduated in medicine from St George's Hospital in 1914, serving during the war as an experimental officer at RNAS Kingsnorth. In 1916 he married Kathleen Wilson, and they later had four children together.[3] After the war he stayed in Cambridge University as lecturer in special senses and senior demonstrator in physiology. He gained a reputation as an ingenious experimenter, constructing, for example, the continuous-flow apparatus for measuring the rates of very fast reactions,[4] as well as working to revise established medical textbooks. His research on the senses of bats identified their use of echolocation to navigate, and in 1920 he correctly proposed that bats use frequencies beyond the range of human hearing.[5]
