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Jean Mayer
 Jean Mayer |
Dr. Jean Mayer, the former president of Tufts University, was a nutritionist whose work helped clarify the nature of hunger and obesity and expanded the federal food stamp and school lunch programs.
In a multifaceted career that spanned a half-century, the French-born Dr. Mayer earned the highest academic honors, was a hero of the Free French forces in World War II, became one of the world’s leading nutritionists and directed pioneering research into problems of poverty, malnutrition, aging and obesity.
He also served as an adviser to three presidents, helped develop national policies to combat hunger and improve nutrition among poor and elderly people, wrote 70 scientific papers and 10 books, taught for 25 years at Harvard, and transformed Tufts from a small liberal arts college into a research university of international reputation.
Dr. Mayer (pronounced my-YAIR), was a perfect blend of European intellectual and American pragmatist: a charming, talkative, often stubborn educator who pushed the frontiers of knowledge in the laboratory and fought hunger and malnutrition wherever they flourished.
His personal philosophy—that scholarship, research and teaching must be dedicated to solving pressing world problems—helped to establish Tufts as a leader in interdisciplinary approaches to sustaining the environment, fostering good nutrition and preventing famine.
In 1969, Dr. Mayer led a mission to Biafra, in Nigeria, during the fighting at the time. He and his colleagues assessed starvation and other problems amid daily bombings that forced them to take cover in trenches, bunkers and ditches. His report to the president led to increased shipments of food, drugs and other relief supplies.
He also took part in relief missions to India, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and other impoverished nations, and in 1966 was among the country’s first scientists to speak out against the use of herbicides to kill crops and foliage cover used by the enemy in the Vietnam war.
Many of his social ideas stemmed from his own pioneering research, notably his studies on obesity and the regulation of hunger.
—By Robert D. McFadden from The New York Times
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