Nevin Stewart Scrimshaw (January 20, 1918 – February 8, 2013) was an American food scientist and

Institute Professor An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

emeritus at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. Scrimshaw was born in

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...

. During the course of his long career he developed nutritional supplements for alleviating

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...

, iodine, and

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

deficiencies in the developing world. His pioneering and extensive publications in the area of human nutrition and food science include over 20 books and monographs and hundreds of scholarly articles. Scrimshaw also founded the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama, and the Nevin Scrimshaw International Nutrition Foundation. He was awarded the Bolton L. Corson Medal in 1976 and the

World Food Prize The World Food Prize is an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world. Conceived by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nor ...

in 1991. Scrimshaw spent the last years of his life on a farm in

Thornton, New Hampshire Thornton is a town in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 2,708 at the 2020 census, up from 2,490 at the 2010 census. History Thornton was incorporated on July 6, 1763, and named for Doctor Matthew Thornton, a signe ...

, where he died at 95.

Life

Scrimshaw came from New England, and spent the 1930s and 1940s there studying nutrition, especially

protein combining Protein combining or protein complementing is a dietary theory for protein nutrition that purports to optimize the biological value of protein intake. According to the theory, vegetarian and vegan diets may provide an insufficient amount of some ...

, alongside his wife and fellow scientist, Mary Goodrich. In the 1950s and 1960s, they lived in Guatemala and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. They designed meals using local vegetables to fight against the scourge of kwashiorkor. In Guatemala they used the combination of cottonseed flour with maize, while in India they combined peanut flour with wheat. His daughter is medical anthropologist and academic administrator Susan C. Scrimshaw.

Works

* 1968: (with John Everett Gordon) ''Malnutrition, learning and behavior'',

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

* 1968: (with

Carl E. Taylor Carl Ernest Taylor, MD, DrPH (July 26, 1916 – February 4, 2010) founder of the academic discipline of international health who dedicated his life to the well-being of the world's marginalized people. He was the founding chair of the Departmen ...

and John Everett Gordon) ''Interactions of nutrition and infection'',

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of ...

Monograph #57 * 1971: (with

Alan Berg Alan Harrison Berg (January 18, 1934 – June 18, 1984) was an American talk radio show host in Denver, Colorado. Born to a Jewish family, he had outspoken atheistic and liberal views and a confrontational interview style. Berg was murdered b ...

& David L. Call) ''Nutrition, national planning and development'', MIT Press * 1971: (editor with Aaron M. Altschul) ''Amino acid fortification of protein foods'', MIT Press * 1974: (editor with Moises Behar) ''Nutrition and agricultural development: significance and potential for the tropics'', Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama,

Plenum Press Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 i ...

* 1975: (with Max Milner & Daniel I. C. Wang) ''Protein resources and technology'', Avi Publishing * 1982: (with Mitchel B. Wallerstein) ''Nutrition policy implementation: issues and experience'', Plenum Press

Awards and honours

American Medical Association The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016. The AMA's sta ...

/Joseph B. Goldberger Award in Clinical Nutrition, 1969 *

Institute of Food Technologists The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) is an international, non-profit scientific society of professionals engaged in food science, food technology, and related areas in academia, government and industry. It has more than 17,000 members from ...

Bor S. Luh International Award, 1969 (known then as the IFT International Award)Institute of Food Technologists
List of IFT past award winners
Retrieved 29 May 2012. * member, National Academy of Sciences, 1971 *

American Society for Nutrition The American Society for Nutrition (ASN) is an American society for professional researchers and practitioners in the field of nutrition. ASN publishes four journals in the field of nutrition. It has been criticized for its financial ties to the ...

/Conrad Elvehjem Award for Public Service in Nutrition, 1976 * Bolton S. Corson Medal, 1976 * Fellow of the American Institute of Nutrition, 1985 *

Bristol-Myers The Bristol Myers Squibb Company (BMS) is an American multinational pharmaceutical company. Headquartered in New York City, BMS is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and consistently ranks on the ''Fortune'' 500 list of the lar ...

Award for Distinguished Achievements in Nutrition Research, 1988 *

, 1991

References

External links

Works by and about Nevin S. Scrimshaw
on

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scrimshaw, Nevin S. 1918 births 2013 deaths American food scientists Harvard University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Tufts University faculty People from Massachusetts Scientists from Milwaukee People from New York (state) Academic staff of United Nations University University of Rochester alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Auxologists People from Thornton, New Hampshire Agriculture and food award winners Members of the National Academy of Medicine

Life

Works

Awards and honours

References

Further reading

External links