Reginald Passmore

Background

Reginald Passmore was born on March 16, 1910, in Hinckley, England, the United Kingdom.

Education

Passmore attended Tonbridge School and won a scholarship to Brasenose College in 1927, where he received a degree in physiology. He also studied at St. Mary’s Hospital, London where he studied medicine. He graduated in 1935.

Career

Passmore was one of England’s leading post-World War II authorities in the field of human nutrition and dietetics. The author of some 115 articles over a long career in clinical and academic medicine, he co-wrote a book on human nutrition that became the leading textbook in the field through the mid-1900s.

After two years of research and teaching at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, Passmore joined the Indian Medical Service in Coonoor, South India, in 1937. By 1940, he had published seventeen papers.

During World War II, Passmore was commissioned as a medical officer in the Maharatas, serving in Iraq, Eritrea, Cyprus, and the Western Desert. Later, he treated Burma front casualties in hospitals in India. He attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel by the war’s end and became a full colonel while serving in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1947 Passmore retired to Britain, where he joined Edinburgh University Medical School, staying there until his retirement in 1985 as a reader in physiology. During this period, he wrote extensively and served on numerous committees. He advised the World Health Organization and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization on human energy and protein requirements and served as a UNICEF consultant in South America and Thailand. He also worked on the Ministry of Health’s committee on the medical aspects of food policy and on the Ministry of Agriculture’s Committee on food standards.

Admired as a stimulating conversationalist with a wide range of interests outside of medicine, Passmore published many works during this period, including Energy, Work, and Leisure and The Scotsman's Food, as well as the seminal Human Nutrition and Dietetics, co-authored with Sir Stanley Davidson and Peter Meiklejohn, which became the leading textbook on the subject and went into eight editions. In addition, Passmore co-edited Companion to Medical Studies and William Cullen and the 18th-Century Medical World. He also served as editor of the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, to which he was elected a fellow in 1976.

Achievements

• Passmore became known as an eminent physiologist and researcher and published a seminal textbook, Human Nutrition, and Dietetics and over 115 papers. As Scientific Editor for the College, Passmore edited over twenty years of editions of the Chronicle (now Proceedings), the Tercentenary Congress Proceedings and the bicentenary book on William Cullen.

Works

• book

  • Energy, Work and Leisure 1967
  • Human nutrition and dietetics

Connections

Passmore married Esme Mussel, a nurse, in 1933 and stayed married to her until her death in 1991. They had three sons together.

Spouse:

Esme Mussel

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 189
  2001