Robert Percival Cook
Prof Robert Percival Cook FRSE (1906-1989) was an Australian-born biochemist. He advised the government on nutritional issues during the Second World War and was considered an expert in the field of nutrition.
Life
He was born in Melbourne, Australia on 14 April 1906, the fourth of five children to Francis Percival Cook (1867-1933), a stationer and printer, and his wife, Alice May Margaret Robertson (1870-1950).[1] He was educated at the Scotch College, Melbourne and then studied Chemistry at the University of Melbourne 1922 to 1925.In April 1926 he travelled to the United Kingdom to work in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of London. In October 1926 he went to Cambridge University to work under Prof Frederick Gowland Hopkins in their Biochemistry Laboratory. In the late 1920s he went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris where he met his wife-to-be. He returned to Cambridge in 1930, and received a PhD that year.[2]
During the Second World War he undertook nutritional research gor the government, based at Dundee University from 1940. Dundee granted him a Doctor of Science (DSc) in 1942.[3] He became an international authority on cholesterol, undertaking a large number experiments upon his own self.
In March 1966 he was made Head of the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry at Dundee University. In January 1972 he became Professor of Biochemistry and in 1973 was made an Emeritus Professor.[4]
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1946.[5]
He died on 26 August 1989.
References
- ↑ http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/50971
- ↑ http://epona.lib.ed.ac.uk:1822/cgi-bin/view_isad.pl?id=GB-0254-UR-SF-34&view=basic
- ↑ http://arccat.dundee.ac.uk/dserve.exe?&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=495&dsqSearch=(Level='Fonds')
- ↑ http://epona.lib.ed.ac.uk:1822/cgi-bin/view_isad.pl?id=GB-0254-UR-SF-34&view=basic
- ↑ https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf