Rodney Hill FRS[1] (11 June 1921 – 2 February 2011)[2] was an applied mathematician and a former Professor of Mechanics of Solids at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Hill is widely regarded as among the foremost contributors to the foundations of solid mechanics over the second half of the 20th century.

This deep interest led eventually to general studies of uniqueness and stability in nonlinear continuum mechanics, work which has had a profound influence on the field of solid mechanics—theoretical, computational and experimental alike—over the past decades.

Publisher Elsevier, in collaboration with IUTAM, established a quadrennial award in the field of solid mechanics, known as the Rodney Hill Prize, first presented at ICTAM in Adelaide in August 2008.

Its first recipient is Michael Ortiz, for his contribution to nonconvex plasticity and deformation microstructures (California Institute of Technology, USA).