Nutrition Studies Endowed

Nutrition has become a separate discipline at the Harvard Medical School with the establishment of the first endowed chair in that field.

W. Allen Walker was named the first Taff Professor of Nutrition last September, a post created by a $1.5 million gift from the estate of a recently deceased businessperson.

According to University officials, Conrad Taff died of colon cancer which he believed was caused by a nutritionally imbalanced diet.

Walker, a former professor of pediatrics, intends to improve the study of nutrition to help others avoid the same fate.

"We want to bring nutrition from the Middle Ages, where it has been, into the world of contemporary biology," he said in a statement released yesterday.

Walker and Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition Walter C. Willett are working together to create a nutrition research center and a training program for medical students, officials said.

They hope to receive a grant from the National Institute of Health to fund the center, as well as other activities.

Willett and Walker will also work with others to study preventive diets for babies and children, according to the University.

"We need to take that aspect of preventive medicine back to its earliest stages," said Walker, who has done a great deal of research on infant nutrition.

The project is related to another program dealing with infant nutrition at Massachusetts General and the Children's Hospital, Walker said.

"With these new resources, we'll be able to provide monies to help young researchers who wish to start their own projects," he said.