Robert Cook

Robert Percival Cook FRSE (1906-1989) was an Australian-born biochemist. He advised the UK government on nutritional issues during the Second World War and was considered an expert in the field of nutrition. He played a key role in the development of life sciences at the University of Dundee, with his colleague and fellow biochemist Geoffrey Dutton noting that Cook served the "University very well indeed."

Life

He was born in Melbourne, Australia on 14 April 1906, the fourth of five children to Francis Percival Cook (1867-1933), a stationer and printer, and his wife, Alice May Margaret Robertson (1870-1950). He was educated at Trinity Grammar School, Kew and the Scotch College, Melbourne before going on to study Chemistry at the University of Melbourne 1922 to 1925.In April 1926 he travelled to the United Kingdom to work in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of London. In October 1926 he went to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to work under Prof Frederick Gowland Hopkins in their Biochemistry Laboratory. In the late 1920s he went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris where he met his wife-to-be. He returned to Cambridge in 1930, and received a PhD that year. At Cook's suggestion the department was renamed the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry.

He died on 26 August 1989. He was survived by his wife Matilda who died in 1998.

His papers are held by the University of Dundee's Archive Services.