Vernon R. Young

Vernon Robert Young (November 15, 1937 – March 30, 2004) was widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on protein and amino acid requirements and revolutionized scientific understanding of how the human body processes nutrients into protein.

Young was born in Rhyl, Wales, and educated in England at the University of Cambridge and the University of Reading, where he received degrees in agriculture, before earning his doctorate in nutrition at the University of California, Davis, in 1965. He joined the M.I.T. faculty that year and in 1977 became a professor of nutritional biochemistry.

Young also served as associate program director for M.I.T.'s Clinical Research Center during the 1980s and held posts at Harvard Medical School and the Boston Shriners Hospital. He was a former president of the American Institute of Nutrition and, in 1990, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1993, Young was elected to the academy's Institute of Medicine.

In 2001, Young was named to the board of directors of Nestle Corporation, which sought his nutritional expertise.

Life and Career

----The only son of a mariner and homemaker, Young was born in Rhyl, Wales but spent much of his youth during the years of World War II at his uncle's farm in the Sherwood Forest area of Nottinghamshire.

Further international work and teaching

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Awards

----Mead-Johnson Award (1973), the Borden Award (1983), the McCollum Award (1987), the Rank Prize in Nutrition (1989), and Danone Prize (1998).