Jean Mayer; Tufts Chancellor, Adviser on U.S. Nutrition

Jean Mayer, chancellor and former president of Tufts University and internationally known nutritionist who advised presidents on feeding the nation’s hungry, has died. He was 72.

Mayer, who lived in Boston, died of a heart attack Friday while vacationing in Sarasota, Fla.

A native of Paris and the son of noted French physiologist Andre Mayer, Jean Mayer created the nation’s first graduate school of nutrition at Tufts and served as adviser to Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter.

He directed pioneering research in malnutrition, aging and obesity, and helped to establish and expand the nation’s food stamp and school lunch programs.

“There is nothing that Jean Mayer ever did that was local,” said Tom Murnane, senior vice president at Tufts who knew Mayer for 16 years. “Everything was global. He was trying to get all of us to think beyond our own selves.”

Mayer was elevated to chancellor of Tufts, a position created especially for him, last Sept. 1 after serving as the university’s president for 16 years.

Admitting candidly to a slight weight problem himself, Mayer gained perhaps his greatest international following in 1969 when Nixon tapped him as White House consultant on nutrition. He was charged with organizing the three-day White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health in December of that year, the first government study of the nation’s nutritional problems.

“You can’t expect work and achievement out of people unless you feed them properly,” Mayer frequently said. “It’s as simple as that.”

A professor of nutrition at Harvard University from 1950 until 1976, the many-faceted Mayer co-authored a syndicated column on nutrition that appeared in The Times for many years.

Tracing his interest in nutrition to his childhood, Mayer studied at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris, and earned the gold medal of the city of Paris and the first national honor prize in history at his graduation in 1936.

In the next three years, Mayer earned three degrees from the University of Paris with high honors.

Mayer became a hero of the Free French forces in World War II, beginning the war as a French army second lieutenant in field artillery. He was captured by German forces in June, 1940, but escaped from a prison camp after shooting a guard.

He served briefly with the French underground and as a British intelligence agent. He saw action on North Atlantic convoys, served on Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s private staff in London, and fought with the Free French and Allied forces in North Africa, Italy and France. In 1944 he was with the Allied invasion of southern France and saw action in the Battle of the Bulge.

Discharged as a captain, Mayer received 14 military decorations, including the Croix de Guerre with gold star, bronze star and two palms; the Resistance Medal, and the rank of chevalier in the Legion of Honor.

After the war, Mayer married an American and moved to the United States, where he became an American citizen and earned a Ph.D. in physiological chemistry at Yale University.

Concurrent with his Harvard teaching and research, he served as consultant to the U.S. government, to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture and World Health organizations, and to Children’s Hospital in Boston.

Mayer extensively researched obesity, which he called a “disease of civilization,” and appetite control. A staunch advocate of physical exercise and a balanced diet to control weight, Mayer was credited with discovering how hunger is regulated by glucose in the blood.

He studied poverty and malnutrition and led relief efforts in the 1960s in Africa, India and other parts of Asia, and in the United States. He helped to found the National Council on Hunger and Malnutrition in the United States, and served as its first chairman in 1969.

“Jean Mayer made hunger unacceptable in America, and today millions of healthy children have him to thank,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said when Mayer’s death was announced.

Mayer was a prolific writer and, in addition to his newspaper column, he authored more than 750 scientific papers and 10 books.

He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, five children, Henri, John, Laura, Theodore and Pierre, a sister and five grandchildren.