Prescott, Samuel Cate

Prescott, Samuel Cate

(1872–1962) food scientist; born in South Hampton, N.H. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1895), he worked with William Lyman Underwood to understand the scientific basis for canning food. He also led the crusade for sanitary milk and was a major in the Army Sanitary Corps during World War I. As Dean of the School of Science at MIT (1932–42), he helped break down barriers between the sciences to make interdisciplinary studies, like food science, possible. He was the first president of the Institute of Food Technology (1939–41).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.