Vernon R. Young

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES V E R N O N R . Y O U N G 1 9 3 7 — 2 0 0 4 A Biographical Memoir by NEVIN S. SCRIMSHAW, ARNOLD L. DEMAIN, AND NAOMI K. FUKAGAWA Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoir COPYRIGHT 2008 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WASHINGTON, D.C. VERNON ROBERT YOUNG November 15, 1937–March 30, 2004 BY NEVIN S . SCRIMSHAW, ARNOLD L . DEMAIN , AND NAOMI K. FUKAGAWA ERNON ROBERT YOUNG WAS THE world’s leading expert on Vhuman protein and amino acid requirements and metabolism at the time of his death of complications of renal cancer at the age of 66. He was a key investigator in the series of studies that revealed the inadequacy of the 1973 Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Recommended Allowance for human protein requirements and the research that corrected this serious error. Later his innovative use of stable isotopes showed that the estimated essential amino acid requirement levels universally accepted since the 1940s were much too low. These erroneous values had been endorsed by a series of FAO/WHO committees, including one that met as late as 1985. With confirmation in Indian subjects from his collaborator Anura Kurpad in Bangalore, Young proposed a new “MIT” pattern that was adopted, with minor changes, by the 2003 FAO/WHO/UNU Expert Consultation. It recognized that adult essential amino acid requirement estimates per gram of protein needed to be increased by a factor of 2 to 3, de- pending on the specific amino acid. He reported this work and a great deal of other groundbreaking research in over 600 full-length articles and book chapters, approximately 3 4 BIOGRA P HICAL MEMOIRS one per month for 42 years. His contributions to human nutritional science were exceptional. Vernon Young was born in Rhyl, North Wales, in 1937 but lived in Cardiff from an early age. His interest in agriculture developed from visits to an uncle’s farm in Nottinghamshire. He obtained his B.Sc. from the University of Reading in 1959 and a postgraduate diploma from Cambridge University in 1960. He then moved to the University of California, Davis, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1965 with a thesis on calcium and phosphorus homeostasis in sheep. He came to the Depart- ment of Nutrition and Food Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow in the same year and was promoted to assistant professor the following year. He rose rapidly through the ranks and became a full professor in 1977. Soon after arriving at MIT he met his future wife, Janice Harrington, of Wellesley, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, who was then executive secretary of the department. They were married in 1966 and settled permanently in Wellesley. Vernon Young’s life was dedicated to his research at MIT and with many collaborators in other institutions and countries, but he was also devoted to his wife, his four sons—Chris- topher, Andrew, Michael, and Richard—and his daughter, Patricia. They were a happy and devoted family. Vernon did much of his writing at his home in Wellesley when he was not in his MIT office or traveling. A twin sister, Sylvia Young Price, lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa. ADDITIONAL ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS In addition to his professorship at MIT Young served as associate program director of the MIT Clinical Research Center, 1985-1987, and director of research for the Shri- ners Burns Institute, 1987-1990. Additional appointments in Boston at the time of his death included lecturer in sur- VERNON ROBERT YOUNG 5 gery, Harvard University, and senior visiting scientist, U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Center on Aging, Tufts University, 1988-2004. Young also held appointments as visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, 1983; University of Southern California Medical School, March 1984; University of Illinois, Urbana, March 1986; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, March 1986; University of Iowa, Iowa City, May 1986; University of Florida, Gainesville, December 1987; Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, January 1988; Case Western Re- serve School of Medicine, Cleveland, September 1988. He served as visiting research fellow, Merton College, Oxford, U.K., April-June 1994; visiting scholar, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio 1996; and visiting professor, the Universities of Wageningen and Maastrich, The Netherlands, 2000; and visiting research fellow, University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland, 2002. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LECTURESHIPS AND COMMITTEES Young’s named lectureships included the Vickers Lecture of the British Neonatal Health Science Center, San Antonio, 1986; the American Society for Nutritional Sciences McCollum Award Lecture, 1987; Burns Lecture, Royal College of Physi- cians and Surgeons, Scotland, 1990; Brackenridge Lecture, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, 1996; Bruce and Virginia Street Lecture in Preventive Nutrition, University of North Texas, Fort Worth, 1996; Ninth Annual Malcolm Trout Lecture, Michigan State University, 1997; Rudolf Schonheimer Centenary Lecture, Nutrition Society of U.K.,1998; first David Murdock Lecture in Nutrition, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, 1998; Jonathan Roads Lecture, American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. 1999; Hans Fischer Lecture, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 1999; and W. O. Atwater Lecture and Award, USDA Agricultural 6 BIOGRA P HICAL MEMOIRS Research Service, 2001. Editorial boards on which he served included the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1976-1978; Nutrition Research, 1980-1984; Advances in Nutrition Research, 1976-2004; Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, 1981-1985; Age, 1977-1982; Growth, 1986-1990; Journal of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria, 1990-1994; and Nutrition Today, 1997-2004. The preceding description of Young’s positions, honors, named lectures, and editorial boards does not capture the extent of his influence in Boston, nationally and throughout the world. Within MIT he served as a member of the important Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects from 1978 to 1984 and the Committee on Radiation Safety. Within the Department of Nutrition and Food Science he served as an undergraduate and graduate adviser and on the Curriculum Committee, the Nutrition and Metabolism Doctoral Committee, Doctoral Examination Committee, and Executive Committee. Nationally he served as a member of the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, 1992-1998. He chaired the Nutrition Implementation Com- mittee, National Cancer Institute Division of Cancer Preven- tion from 1998 until 2004. Among the many national committees to which Young contributed were the Food and Drug Administration Board of Inquiry on aspartame, 1978; the National Institutes of Health Nutrition Study Section, 1981-1985, and numerous ad hoc study sections; the NIH Consensus Panel on Health Risks, the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor University, Houston, 1985; National Academy of Sciences Committee on Diet and Health,1986-1987; USDA Council of Scientific Advisors, Houston; Scientific Advisory Commit- tee, Pennington Medical Center, Baton Rouge, 1991-1998; National Dairy Council, 1994-1998; and the Basic Science Implementation Subcommittee, National Cancer Institute Division of Cancer Prevention, 1998-2004. Internationally he VERNON ROBERT YOUNG 7 was a member of the Committee on Human Protein-Energy Requirements, International Union of Nutrition Sciences, 1991-1997; FAO/WHO/UNU Expert Group on Protein and Energy Requirements, 1981; Visiting Group of the Rowett Re- search Institute, Aberdeen, 1992; Scientific Advisory Commit- tee, Deutsches Institut fur Ernahrungsforschung, 1995-1998. In honor of his nutrition expertise he was elected in 2001 to the Board of the Nestle Company, Vevey, Switzerland. INITIAL RESEARCH AT MIT Brilliance and exceptional scientific intuition character- ized his research career from the beginning. Young published several papers on the effects of dietary protein, infection, and hormones on the translation step of protein synthesis by muscle ribosomes with special attention to initiation and elongation. This led to work on in vivo protein degradation, specifically targeted to certain muscle proteins containing methylated amino acids such as 3-methylhistidine occurring in actin and various types of heavy chain myosin. Stimulated by studies of Hamish Munro in rats, Young was the first to demonstrate in humans that urinary 3-methyl histidine is a direct indicator of muscle proteolysis and hence muscle mass. The discovery was of such great interest that the paper describing this finding became a Citation Classic in 1992. He also prepared and examined ribosomal fractions from skeletal muscle with respect to their capacity for protein synthesis in response to insulin and other factors. HUMAN OBLIGATORY NITROGEN LOSSES AND PROTEIN REQUIREMENTS Together with Nevin Scrimshaw and their many graduate students, Young guided a series of studies that measured the variations in adult obligatory nitrogen losses as the basis for predicting adult protein requirements. This work, comple- mented by that of Doris Calloway at the University of Cali- 8 BIOGRA P HICAL MEMOIRS fornia, Berkeley, became the basis for the 1973 FAO/WHO report. Unfortunately this committee failed to take into ac- count the lower utilization of protein at requirement levels and arrived at an erroneously low recommendation that was later corrected

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