Elmer Verner McCollum

Elmer Verner McCollum (1879 – 1967) was an American biochemist known for his work on the influence of diet on health. He was educated at the University of Kansas and at Yale. McCollum got his Ph.D. from Yale in 2 years, but stayed at Yale for another year working with T. Osborne and L. B. Mendel on problems of plant protein composition and diet. This deeply influenced Mccollum's future career. Mendel helped McCollum secure a faculty position at t... more

Elmer Verner McCollum (1879 – 1967) was an American biochemist known for his work on the influence of diet on health. He was educated at the University of Kansas and at Yale. McCollum got his Ph.D. from Yale in 2 years, but stayed at Yale for another year working with T. Osborne and L. B. Mendel on problems of plant protein composition and diet. This deeply influenced Mccollum's future career. Mendel helped McCollum secure a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He pioneered in the study of vitamins and minerals by experimenting with the diets of small animals. McCollum discovered or helped discover a number of vitamins and originated the letter system of naming vitamins. He discovered Vitamin A and D and showed that Vitamin D prevents rickets, a bone disease. McCollum first proposed that the nutritive failure of certain diets was due to a lack of "palatability." He proposed that if a diet could be made to taste good more flavor, and the animals ate larger... less