Nevin S. Scrimshaw


Nevin Stewart Scrimshaw was an American food scientist and Institute Professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scrimshaw was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the course of his long career he developed nutritional supplements for alleviating protein, iodine in biology|iodine], and iron 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 in 1991. Scrimshaw spent the last years of his life on a farm in Thornton, New Hampshire, where he died at 95.

Life

Scrimshaw came from New England, and spent the 1930s and 1940s there studying nutrition, especially protein combining, alongside his wife and fellow scientist, Mary Goodrich. In the 1950s and 1960s, they lived in Guatemala and India. 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