Ian Hill was an Edinburgh man, educated at George Watson's College and graduating with an MB ChB at Edinburgh in 1928 as the Ettles Scholar of his year. He showed an early interest in cardiology when as a Rockefeller Scholar he studied in Vienna with Wenkebach and at Ann Arbor, Michigan with Frank Wilson. His career was interrupted in 1939 by the Second World War in which he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, attaining the rank of Brigadier. He was appointed consultant physician to the 14th Army in Burma and Allied Land Forces in South-East Asia. He was physician to the Queen in Scotland from 1956 to 1970. He was especially proud to have been the first president to welcome a reigning monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.