James Hillier - Honours

Physicist, born in Brantford, Ontario, SE Canada. He studied in Toronto, then moved to the USA in 1940 and made his career with RCA (the Radio Corporation of America). There he led the group which made the first successful high-resolution electron microscope in 1940. He continued to supervise improvements in RCA's electron microscopes, whose commercial availability after World War 2 revolutionized biology.

Dr. James Hillier, OC , Ph.D , D.Sc (born August 22, 1915) is a Canadian-born scientist and inventor who designed and built, with Albert Prebus, the first successful high-resolution electron microscope in North America in 1938.

Born in Brantford, Ontario, the son of James and Ethel (Cooke) Hillier, he received a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Physics (1937), Master of Arts (1938), and a Ph.D (1941) from the University of Toronto.

In 1940, he went to United States of America and joined the Radio Corporation of America. They have two sons: James Robert Hillier and William Wynship Hillier.

Honours

In 1960, he was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. The James Hillier Elementary School in Brantford, Ontario is named in his honour.