Pioneering scientist Diana Hill has been described as a role model for women in science and a leader in pioneering new scientific technologies.
Dr Hill, who died in Whangarei on July 9, aged 81, had a distinguished career of research and leadership in DNA sequencing and in animal genetics.
She was the first woman professor appointed in the University of Otago’s department of biochemistry and one of its first research professors.
Her research team's work on the genetics of animal production earned a silver medal from the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 1996, and she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1997.
She was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2002.
Dr Hill came to the University of Otago in the late 1960s after a successful nursing career in Northland to pursue a new life direction in science.
During her stage three biochemistry year, her then lab demonstrator Warren Tate noted her superb organisational and technical skills.
He suggested to his PhD supervisor, the late Emeritus Professor George Petersen that she might be ideal as a researcher in his team. That began a very close long-standing research relationship between them, during which she played a pivotal role in Prof Petersen bringing new DNA sequencing technologies into New Zealand in the 1970s.
Together they did pioneering research on DNA sequencing technologies in difficult circumstances, for example, data analysis before the availability of computers involved generating profiles of newly obtained sequences with cardboard and visually scanning them against the sequence already determined.
They worked with two-time Nobel Prize in chemistry winner laureate Frederick Sanger on the huge task at that time of sequencing of the 48,502 base pairs of the lambda bacteriophage DNA genome.
For that and her earlier work, Dr Hill gained a PhD in 1981. Her collaboration with Prof Petersen continued.
In 1986, Dr Hill — recognising the enormous potential of elite selection flocks held by the Maf Invermay Agricultural Centre — built a research team that pioneered single gene identification methods for production traits in sheep and deer.
The success of this work led to the establishment of the AgResearch-University of Otago Molecular Biology Unit in 1989, with Dr Hill as the director, a position she held until 1999.
That was New Zealand’s first major agri-biotechnology programme, and for its strategically-important work the unit was awarded the RSNZ Silver Medal in 1996 for team excellence, the year Dr Hill was awarded a personal professorship at the University of Otago and soon after her RSNZ fellowship.
AgResearch scientist John McEwan said Dr Hill brought the technical expertise of early DNA sequencing and various genotyping methods from her earlier research to the group.
"As a student at Otago, I remember Diana undertaking DNA sequencing reactions in 1977 using phosphorus-32 (a radioactive form of phosphorus). We were advised not to walk past her and George Petersen’s lab door on the way to the smoko room in the Biochemistry Department and I am pretty sure while a lead shield in the lab may have protected Diana, a Geiger counter would register radioactivity in the corridor."
His other memory was Fred Sanger visiting George Petersen and Dr Hill in the same year when they were involved in joint research that led to the lambda bacteriophage DNA genome sequence, the first large-scale genome in the world to be sequenced.
"Fred gave a DNA and protein-sequencing seminar to the biochemistry honours students, which included outlining what is now called the Sanger method, which was published in the same year."
Dr Hill’s stature as a research leader was constantly growing and being recognised, as well as her own awareness of the potential for collaboration between business and science.
That led to the establishment of Global Technologies (NZ ) Ltd in 1999 that was a joint venture with Silver Fern Farms and she was chief executive until 2007.
Her leadership expanded to many advisory groups and boards in the latter part of her career in areas of climate change, international trade, research infrastructure, and biotechnology, and she took part in ministerial delegations to Asia, Europe and South America promoting New Zealand and exploring new opportunities. She was chairwoman of the Marsden Council in 1999-2006.
The daughter of Norman Harold and Weva Marguerite Hill (nee Bracegirdle), she is survived by her siblings and their families. — ODT staff.
