Eat Fish, Live Better: How to Put More Fish and Omega-3 Fish Oils into Your Diet for a Longer, Healthier Life
(Reveals the latest scientific data on the connection betw...)
Reveals the latest scientific data on the connection between fish and disease, tells how to buy, store, clean, and cook fish, and offers a two-week "launching" weight-loss diet
Jean Mayer was a French researcher, university professor, presidential adviser, consultant to government and international organizations.
Background
Mayer was born in Paris, France, on February 19, 1920. The older of two children, he was the son of André and Jeanne Eugenie Mayer, both physiologists. His father, a president of the French Academy of Medicine and member of the League of Nations Commission on Hunger, later played an important role in founding the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). During Jean's youth conversations at home often centered on hunger and malnutrition, as well as on the subject of physiology.
Education
After completing his secondary education, Jean enrolled in the University of Paris, where he was awarded a B. Litt. degree (1937), B. S. (1938), and M. Sc. (1939). A visit to the United States and Harvard University in the summer of 1939 impressed Mayer greatly and ultimately influenced him to leave his homeland.
After the war he studied at Yale University, wrote a dissertation on vitamin A, and obtained his Ph. D. in physiological chemistry in 1948. He also attended the Sorbonne, where he was awarded a D. Sc. in physiology summa cum laude in 1950.
Career
The outbreak of World War II forced postponement of his plans, for he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the French army. Although captured by German troops in 1940 and taken to a prison camp, Mayer escaped by shooting a guard. He served in the French underground and later fought with the Free French and Allied forces in France, Italy, and North Africa. During the war Mayer travelled with forged papers to the United States.
He began a long association with Harvard University which commenced in 1950 as an assistant professor of nutrition and which saw him promoted through the ranks to full professor in 1965. Of equal concern to Mayer was the problem of a lack of food and its companions-hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. He studied ways to alleviate famine and its consequences on Harvard missions to India in 1955 and to Ghana in 1961; was a member of United Nations FAOWHO (World Health Organization) advisory missions to Ghana in 1959 and to the Ivory Coast and West Africa in 1960; and in 1969 he went to Biafra, Nigeria.
In 1967 Mayer joined the U. S. Citizen's Crusade Against Poverty. During the 1960 the problems of poverty and hunger received wide public attention which resulted in President Richard Nixon appointing Mayer as his special consultant on nutrition in 1969. Opening on December 2, 1969, his three-day conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health was addressed by Nixon, who pledged to eliminate hunger in the United States. Among the 3, 000 invited guests were scientists, food processors, government representatives, civil rights leaders, medical personnel, consumer representatives, and spokespersons for the poor. Disgruntled representatives of the poor, whose priorities differed from those of other guests, held separate sessions of their own. He is credited with persuading Nixon to include a food stamp program for the poor in his plans for welfare reform and an expanded school lunch program for needy children.
In 1970 Mayer returned to Harvard's Center for Population Studies, and in July 1976 he became the tenth president of Tufts University. During the 1970 he received presidential and congressional appointments, including appointments to the President's Consumer Advisory Council, 1970-1977; as chairman of the Nutrition Division of the White House Conference on Aging, 1971; as general coordinator of the U. S. Senate National Nutrition Policy Study, 1974; and on the Presidential Commission on World Hunger, 1978-1980. At the United Nations he was a member of the Protein Advisory Group, 1973-1975, and director of the Project on Priorities in Child Nutrition, United Nations International Children's and Educational Fund (UNICEF), 1973-1975.
On September 1, 1992, Mayer became the Chancellor of Tufts University. Mayer died of a heart attack in Sarasota, Florida on January 1, 1993 while vacationing.
As a researcher who studied obesity, the physiological controls on hunger, and the relationship to disease, Mayer also became a strong advocate of physical exercise and promoted its benefits in weight control and the maintenance of good health.
Personality
Mayer is remembered as having brought with him a sense of energy and excitement.
Quotes from others about the person
In presenting the Presidential End Hunger Award to Mayer, President Bush said, "The goal of ending hunger requires involvement, and Jean Mayer is an example of the rare breed on individual who has never hesitated to get involved when he saw a need. "
Connections
He married Bostonian Elizabeth Van Huysen on March 16, 1942. He was the father of five children-André, Laura, John-Paul, Theodore, and Pierre.