Cecile Hoover Edwards
| Cecile Hoover Edwards | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Cecile Annette Hoover October 26, 1926 East Saint Louis, Illinois |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Washington, D.C. |
| Citizenship | American |
| Fields | Nutrition |
| Institutions | North Carolina A&T State University Howard University |
| Education | B.A., nutritional chemistry, Tuskegee Institute M.A., organic chemistry, Tuskegee Institute PhD, nutrition, Iowa State University |
| Thesis | "Utilization of Nitrogen by the Animal Organism" (1950) |
| Known for | Nutritional research for low-income and African American people |
| Spouse | Dr. Gerald Alonzo Edwards |
| Children | 3 |
Cecile Hoover Edwards (October 26, 1926 – September 17, 2005) was an African American nutritional researcher and Howard University dean whose career focused on improving the nutrition and well-being of disadvantaged people. Her scientific focus was on finding low-cost foods with an optimal amino acid composition, with a special interest in methionine metabolism.
She was cited by the National Council of Negro Women for outstanding contributions to science. She also received three citations from the Illinois House of Representatives for devotion to the cause of eliminating poverty.[1] She was honored by the State of Illinois on April 5, 1984, with the declaration of that day as "Dr. Cecile Hoover Edwards Day".[2][3]
Contents
Early life and education
Cecile Annette Hoover was born in East Saint Louis, Illinois on October 26, 1926.[1] Her father, Ernest Hoover, managed an insurance company, and her mother, Annie Jordan, was a schoolteacher.[3] She graduated from high school at age 15 and went to Tuskegee Institute, where she graduated in 1946 with a bachelor's degree in nutritional chemistry.[4] She did research on the animal source of protein and received a master's degree in organic chemistry from Tuskegee in 1947, before her twenty-first birthday.[1][4] She received her PhD in nutrition from Iowa State University in 1950, submitting her dissertation on "Utilization of Nitrogen by the Animal Organism: Influence of caloric intake and methionine supplementation on the protein metabolism of albino rats fed rations low in nitrogen and containing various proportions of fat".[4]
Academic career
Edwards became an assistant professor of foods and nutrition at Tuskegee from 1950 to 1952, and was promoted to head of the department from 1952 to 1956.[3][4] Simultaneously, she was a research associate for the Carver Foundation.[4] In 1956, she moved to North Carolina A&T State University, where she was professor of nutrition and research until 1971; at the same time, she headed the department of home economics from 1968 to 1971.[3] In 1971 she moved to Howard University in Washington, D.C., serving as professor of nutrition and continuing economics.[3] During her tenure there, she was dean of the School of Human Ecology for 13 years,[3] dean of the School of Continuing Education, and interim dean of the College of Pharmacy, Nursing and Allied Health Sciences, and established a doctoral program in nutrition at Howard.
In 1978 she received a Ford Foundation fellowship to act as a nutritional consultant at the University of Khartoum.[4] She returned to Howard University to serve as Dean of the School of Human Ecology from 1974 until her retirement in 1990.[4]
Research
Much of her career focused on the eating habits of pregnant African-American women.[1] Her focus was on the amino acid composition of foods, especially vegetables, with the goal of finding low-cost foods that were optimal for protein production.[2] She had a particular interest in the metabolism of the amino acid methionine, and starting in the 1950s, led an 18-year study for the National Institutes of Health on this topic.[1] In the late 1980s she studied historical dietary patterns in the South, identifying inexpensive traditional dishes that were sources of protein, and developing nutrition plans reducing the amount of fat in African-American cuisine.[1][2] She also performed research on pica.[4] She opposed hereditarian positions in the nature and nurture debate such as those of Arthur Jensen; she concluded that social and environmental factors were at least as responsible as heredity in influencing intelligence.[1]
Edwards was a nutritional consultant and was also a member of numerous government committees and panels, including those convened by the National Institutes of Health, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health.[1][4] She authored 160 research papers, and co-authored a 1991 book, Human Ecology: Interaction of Man With His Environments.[1]
Personal
In 1952[2] she married Gerald Alonzo Edwards, a physical chemist with whom she collaborated on many research projects, and who predeceased her by three months.[1][4] They had three children.[1]
She died on September 17, 2005 in Washington Home Hospice.[1] She is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, US.[5]
Bibliography
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References
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