Dr. R.W. Bill Hamilton is a physiologist with more than three decades of specialization in diving, aerospace, and environmental physiology, with particular interest in decompression, breathing gases, and the effects of pressure.  Ten of these years (1964-1974) were as a scientist and director of the Union Carbide research laboratory supporting commercial diving, serving as the research arm of Ocean Systems, Inc.

Since 1976 Dr. Hamilton has been principal of Hamilton Research, Ltd. His work has included the development and assessment of decompression and operating procedures for commercial, scientific, recreational, and military diving. He also develops safety and operational planning, technical training programs, market surveys, and serves as an expert witness.

Dr. Hamilton, has developed many types of decompression procedures for a variety of diving and exposures to pressure, ranging from submarine free ascent to deep commercial diving, and including procedures for treatment of decompression sickness. This work has evolved into a comprehensive computer program, DCAP, which makes it possible for diving researchers to calculate comprehensive decompression tables. DCAP is in use by the British, Swedish, Japanese, and Finnish Navies, the German GKSS facility, the Japanese Marine Science and Technology Center, hyperbaric treatment facilities and commercial companies. DCAP has provided decompression tables used by NOAA, NASA, NUTEC, U.S. Navy labs, Karolinska Institute, archaeological research projects, commercial companies, accident analysis, and other special operations and commercial procedures.

Dr. Hamilton is the leader in the development and commercial application of nitrogen-oxygen (Nitrox) saturation-excursion procedures, including those in the NOAA diving manual plus NOAA's Repex procedures for repetitive excursion diving. For NASA, he developed decompression procedures for use with a hyperbaric lock on a space station.

His custom decompression tables and information have strongly influenced the origination and development of technical diving. Dr. Hamilton's decompression procedures are routinely used to explore caves and shipwrecks.

He has served on the safety board of NOAA's Undersea Research Program, NASA's Space Station Hyperbaric Chamber committee, DAN's Decompression Advisory Board, the Safety Board of the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber, the Medical Advisory Panel of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, the UHMS Safety Committee, NFPA's Hypo/Hyperbaric subcommittee, and as an inspector of diving training schools for the NY State Education Department.

Dr. Hamilton has received both the Stover-Link and Oceaneering awards of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, and the Award for Professional Excellence from the Aerospace Industrial Life Sciences Association. 

Dr. Hamilton's innovations, consultations, and work in the industrial and recreational field position him as both universally respected, and authoritative. His participation in many projects and research in the use of mixed gases have established him as a pioneer, and his conservative approach to safety forms the foundation for a "non-fringe" philosophy of gas usage.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at rwh@rwhamilton.com