Walter Scott Hill and Uruguayan physics

The history of physics in Uruguay has long been misunderstood by the country’s historians. This article proposes a new way of considering that past, researching the career of Walter Scott Hill at the Institute of Physics of the University of the Republic of Uruguay (Udelar). By doing so, not only can we fill a gap in the history of Uruguayan science, but we can also understand how important a role the laboratory had in the country’s physics and what ramifications this had. Uruguayan physics did not develop from a university chair or an institute or some scientific society; its embryo was the laboratory at the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying, part of the Institute of Physics at Udelar, even if its subsequent development did not apparently generate further fruit.