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Elsie Widdowson

Elsie Widdowson
Elsie Widdowson.jpg
Born (1906-10-21)21 October 1906
Wallington, Surrey
Died 14 June 2000(2000-06-14) (aged 93)
Medical career
Profession Chemist, Dietitian
Institutions Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry;
Medical Research Council;
Dunn Nutritional Laboratory
Specialism dietetics
Research vitamins
Notable prizes Companion of Honour; Fellow of the Royal Society

Elsie Widdowson CH CBE FRS (21 October 1906 – 14 June 2000), was a British dietitian. She and Dr Robert McCance were responsible for overseeing the government-mandated addition of vitamins to food and wartime rationing in Britain during World War II.

Widdowson was born in Wallington, Surrey. Her father was a grocer's assistant. Her younger sister Eva Crane trained as a nuclear physicist but became a world-renowned authority on bees.

She lived in Dulwich and attended Sydenham County Grammar School for Girls. She studied chemistry at Imperial College, London and graduated with a BSc in 1928, becoming one of the first women graduates of Imperial College. She did postgraduate work at the Department of Plant Physiology at Imperial College, receiving a PhD in chemistry in 1931 for her thesis on the carbohydrate content of apples. She did further research with Professor Charles Dodds at the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at Middlesex Hospital, on the metabolism of the kidneys, and also received a doctorate from the Courtauld Institute.

Dodds suggested that Widdowson should consider specialising in dietetics, and she started a postgraduate diploma at King's College, London. Widdowson met Robert McCance in the kitchens at King's College Hospital in 1933, where she was studying industrial cooking techniques as part of her diploma on dietetics. McCance was a junior doctor researching the chemical effects of cooking as part of his clinical research on the treatment of diabetes. Widdowson pointed out an error in McCance's analysis of the fructose content of fruit, and they both realised that there were significant errors in the standard nutritional tables. They became scientific partners and worked together for the next 60 years, until McCance died in 1993.


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