Frank Benedict was one of America’s leading physiologists whose work was an important contribution to understanding heat production and regulation in humans and animals. Trained as a chemist, Benedict began his career working under W.O. Atwater at Wesleyan University. He showed such talent at using calorimeters to measure heat production and loss that the Trustees …
Russell Henry Chittenden, known as the father of American biochemistry, was the leading American biochemist during the 40 years he taught and conducted research at the Yale Medical School and the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. Chittenden studied the chemistry of digestion, especially protein digestion, and challenged the dogma of the day, supported by W.C. Atwater, …
John R. Murlin, Director of the Department of Vital Economics and a Professor of Physiology at the University of Rochester, helped start in 1928 the American Institute of Nutrition and the Journal of Nutrition, which he edited through its first 17 volumes. Murlin volunteered for officer training during World War I and was assigned to …
Edwin Bret Hart was chair of Agricultural Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin from 1906 to 1944. His research primarily concerned the role of minerals in the general nutrition of animals and the role of vitamins and other organic nutrients in animal metabolism. He helped elucidate the role of iodine in preventing and controlling goiter …
Mary Swartz Rose was a prominent American nutritionist during the first half of the 20th century at Columbia University Teachers College in New York City. She wrote influential textbooks, such as Laboratory Handbook for Dietetics, first published in 1912, and three editions of The Foundations of Nutrition, as well as books for the general public, …
Harry Hollingworth, a young Barnard College professor, conducted pioneering psychopharmacology research in 1911 into the effects of a food additive, caffeine, on behalf of the Coca-Cola Company, which was being sued by the federal government for adding an injurious ingredient to a food.
Elmer McCollum was a prominent American nutrition scientist of the first half of the 20th century, first at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and then at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.In 1908, McCollum started the first rat colony maintained for nutrition experiments in the United States, work which led to the discovery of vitamins …
Joseph was director of the Neuroscience Laboratory at the USDA-ARS Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. One of his most significant findings was that diets supplemented with fruits, vegetables, and nuts could forestall or even reverse age-related declines in cognitive and motor function.
Harry Steenbock was a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who showed that irradiation by ultraviolet light increased the vitamin D content of foods and other organic materials. Steenbock patented his invention with his own money, then donated the patent to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), which he helped start. WARF licensed …
Babcock, an agricultural chemist at the University of Wisconsin from 1887 to 1913, is best known for inventing an easy way to measure the butterfat content of milk, called the Babcock test, which is still used throughout the world. Babcock later helped conduct feeding studies of dairy cows that demonstrated nutritional differences among grains.
Vedder was a career U.S. military physician who while stationed in the Philippines helped demonstrate that beriberi was a nutrient deficiency disease. In 1913, he published Beriberi, his best known monograph. On his return to the United States, he undertook research on scurvy.
Thomas Osborne studied proteins for nearly 40 years. At the time, it had been generally believed that there were only a few types of proteins, but Osborne’s work clearly showed this to be untrue. With Lafayette Benedict Mendel, his carefully controlled rat feeding studies showed that proteins differ in nutritional value because of differences in …