biography

Mark Hegsted (2014-2009)

Mark Hegsted, who later became administrator of human nutrition in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was sure he didn’t want to be a farmer. “The general direction of my career was probably determined during my first few days at the University of Idaho,” he wrote. “I had been awarded a Union Pacific Scholarship that paid …

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Denham Harman (1916-2014)

Denham Harman (1916-2014), who proposed the free radical theory of aging in 1955, died November 25, 2014, at a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. He was 98.

Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994)

Dorothy Hodgkin was a British biochemist whose mastery of X-ray crystallography helped her elucidate the three-dimensional structures of complex organic molecules, such as cholesterol, penicillin, and insulin.  Her work on the structure of vitamin B-12 earned her the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Carl von Voit (1831-1908)

Carl von Voit was a prominent German physiologist of the 19th century who helped place metabolism on a quantitative footing when he was able to achieve precise nitrogen balance experiments, first in dogs and then in humans. Voit demonstrated that the nitrogen excreted in feces and urine was a measure of protein metabolism.  (Nitrogen is …

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Alice Evans (1881-1975)

Alice Evans demonstrated that unpasteurized cow’s milk could transmit the disease undulant fever to humans. Although initially dismissed by sceptics, her discovery eventually helped lead to the mandatory pasteurization of milk in the 1930s. “Today, Evans’ discovery is recognized as one of the most important medical findings of the twentieth century and constitutes an important …

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Lucy Wills (1888-1964)

Lucy Wills was a British physician who discovered in the late 1920s and early 1930s that something in yeast cured macrocytic anemia.  Called the “Wills Factor,” the substance was later identified as the B vitamin folate.

Marguerite Davis (1887-1967)

Marguerite Davis, a graduate of the University of California, was the young assistant to Elmer McCollum for his early research on vitamins at the University of Wisconsin.  McCollum made her co-author on some of his papers.

Elsie Widdowson (1908-2000)

Elsie Widdowson was one of the leading and most beloved British nutritionists of the 20th century. She’s best known as half of “McCance and Widdowson,” the authoritative compilation of the nutrient content of British foods first published in 1940.

William C. Rose (1887-1985)

William C. Rose established the essential amino acid requirements of the laboratory rat and then humans, after discovering the last of the essential amino acids to be identified, threonine.

Casimir Funk (1884-1967)

A Polish-American biochemist, Casimir Funk in 1912 was the first to clearly propose that diseases like beri-beri, scurvy, and rickets were caused not by infections or toxins, but by the deficiency in foods of trace organic compounds he called “vitamines.” The name stuck, though the “e” was later dropped when it became apparent that not …

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Fredrick Accum 1769-1838

Fredrick Accum was an industrious German-English chemist who in 1820 published an internationally best-selling expose of food adulteration practices in England. A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons detailed shocking practices, named the violators, and described how foods and beverages could be tested for contamination.

William Beaumont (1785 – 1853)

Known as America’s first physiologist, Beaumont was a U.S. Army surgeon stationed on the frontier in northern Michigan in 1822 when he treated a young fur trapper accidentally shot in the chest at close range.

Charles Glen King (1896-1988)

Charles Glen King and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh were the first to isolate vitamin C in 1932, but the credit and Nobel Prize went to Hungary’s Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, a source of lifelong disappointment for King.