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The Robert McCance Lecture
Robert
McCance was born in 1898, the son of an Ulster linen merchant. After leaving
school his first duty was military service, spending the years of World War I
with the Royal Naval Air Service. It was only after his service that he went to
read natural sciences at Cambridge, then going on to study medicine at King's
College Hospital in London.
It was in the kitchens of King's College that he met Elsie Widdowson, and the duo made a formidable scientific partnership. Much of McCance's work was seminal and concerned food composition and nutrition, but his talents were many and varied. Although his food compsotion tables are perhaps the most significant of his publications, he also played a role in the design and development of, among other things, inflatable life rafts.
In later years McCance was
the caretaker director of the Medical Research
Council's infantile malnutrition unit in Kampala, Uganda, and he was elected a Fellow
of the Royal Society in 1948 and appointed CBE in 1953. He died on March 5th,
1993.
Since 1994, a year after his death, the Neonatal Society has hosted the McCance lecture, now a regularly annual event. Each lecture is delivered whilst wearing the McCance medal (pictured right). The first ever lecture was delivered by his long-time colleague, Elsie Widdowson.
The lectures so far are as follows:
2011, London: Professor Abigail Fowden
The placenta and fetal programming
2010, London: N Marlow
Preterm neurodevelopment - strategies to avoid long term follow up
2009, London: H Hagberg
Hypoxia-ischemia in the neonatal brain: molecular mechanisms of injury
2008, London: E Saliba
White matter injury: from pathogenesis to prevention
2007, London: T
Costello
The evidence base for saving newborn lives in the developing world
2006, London: M
Fitzgerald
Neonatal pain processing
2005 Lecture 1, London:
M Hanson
Developmental origins of health and disease: concepts, mechanisms and
implications
2005 Lecture 2, London:
O Saugstad
Air vs 100% oxygen for resuscitation of asphyxiated infants: time to decide
2004, London: L de
Vries
Neonatal neuroimaging - the last 30 years
2003, London: D
FitzPatrick
Identifying genes that cause human malformations
2002, London: A
Prentice
Yokesacs, placentas and breasts: nutritional regulation of early growth
There are no online programmes for these older lectures:
2001, London: C Blakemore
The nature of nurture in the development of the brain
1999, London: J Owens
Placental restriction and the impact of IGF-1 on fetal growth
1998, London: A Jackson
Nutrition during pregnancy
1995, London: A Lucas
Nutritional Programming - back to the future
1994, London: E Widdowson
Why think? Why not try the experiment?
