Elmer Verner McCollum, 1879-1967

Abstract

In his autobiography entitled From Kansas farm boy to scientist , Elmer McCollum gives a vivid description of his early life on a farm near Fort Scott in the State of Kansas. His forebears, of Scottish origin, had emigrated to the United States in 1763 and all had been farmers. His own parents were people of little education, who by dint of hard work and frugal living had become prosperous by local standards and had built a ‘frame house’ in which Elmer was born in 1879, the fourth child and the elder of two sons. Owing to his father’s ill-health, he was put to all types of farm work from an early age. It was a mixed farm with cows, pigs and poultry, as well as crops. By the age of eleven he was experienced in the planting and harrowing of crops as well as in the care of farm animals, which remained an asset in his later life when many of his researches were concerned with their nutrition.