Memorial services are pending for Fredric W. Hill, 85, a professor at UC Davis for 30 years and the first chair of the campus's highly regarded nutrition department.

He was found dead Nov. 29 near Davis after having been missing for six days.

Professor Hill was a pioneer in the field of nutrition, one of the first to study the interaction of carbohydrates, fats and amino acids as energy sources in the body. He studied comparative nutrition, researching how different animal species utilize the major dietary components as energy sources. Hill's initial research focused on the nutritional requirements of poultry, including pioneering work on food composition as it relates to poultry production and growth.

"Professor Hill's vision for the nutrition department was based on building bridges between nutrition and medicine for the improvement of human health," said nutrition professor Andy Clifford, a colleague and longtime friend.

Hill was dedicated to making food more nutritious and was keenly interested in using his research to alleviate world hunger, telling United Press International in 1981 "The simple answer is yes, the world has the capacity to feed itself, but it does not currently use that capacity very effectively ... We can certainly be helpful in creating the research approach and the informational base."

Hill toured Southeast Asia, India and Bangladesh, and served as a scientific advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As associate dean for research and international programs at UC Davis in the late 1970s, he oversaw a $15 million program to improve farming techniques in more than 600 miles of the Nile River Delta in Egypt.

Hill also was dedicated to teaching, starting one of the first general nutrition curricula in the country and founding the Nutrition 10 course at UC Davis, where he often had more than 700 students packed into a class. Nutrition 10 remains one of the most popular nutrition classes in the nation.

"He was a great teacher, mentor, colleague and friend who will be missed," said nutrition professor Robert Rucker. "Fred Hill was a capable administrator and excellent communicator. His strength was his ability to articulate the science of nutrition in the context of human medicine. His early efforts and leadership provided a base from which the UC Davis nutrition department evolved to become one of the best in the nation."

A native of Pennsylvania, Hill held a bachelor's degree in poultry science, a master's in nutrition from Pennsylvania State University, and a doctoral in animal nutrition from Cornell University. He taught animal nutrition at Cornell for 11 years before arriving at UC Davis in 1959 as a professor and chair of poultry husbandry. In 1966, Hill became a professor of nutrition and the department's first chair. He also served as associate dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

He retired from UC Davis in 1989.

Among his many academic honors, Hill was elected in 1984 as a fellow of the American Institute of Nutrition, now known as the American Society for Nutritional Sciences. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1966 and won the Poultry Science Research Prize in 1957. He was also an elected fellow of the American Associa-tion for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Institute of Biological Sciences and the American Chemical Society.

The professor loved to travel and to keep in contact with colleagues and former students now living in various countries, according to his daughter, Linda Hill.

He was married to his wife, Charlotte, for almost 60 years. He was also an avid golfer and a charter member of El Macero Country Club.

Memorial donations can be made in Professor Hill's name to the Department of Nutrition for the support of graduate students. Checks, payable to "UC Regents," can be sent to the Nutrition Department Research Endowment, c/o the Department of Nutrition, UC Davis, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616.