Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

152
OBITUARIES
diets of different ethnic groups in South Africa in 1955. Already in 1953
Ancel had published a seminal study linking the intake of animal fats with
the risk of heart disease. The message that a proper diet and exercise
prevented heart disease had started to gain attention in the media at the end
of the 1950s. Ancel and Margaret further popularised their findings in the
1959 book Eat Well and Stay Well. In 1961 Ancel peered out at a hamburgerloving
post-war USA from the cover of Time magazine; he was well on his
way to gaining his ironic nickname “Mister Cholesterol”.The success of Eat
Well and Stay Well by the Keys was followed by books like The Benevolent Bean
(1967) and Eat Well, Stay Well the Mediterranean Way (1975), which included
practical tips and recipes for a non-specialist audience. Ancel retired from
the University of Minnesota in 1972 but continued to work and published
his last findings in 2000.
The work of Ancel and his wife Margaret led to the realisation that the
epidemic of coronary disease could be prevented. Their contribution to
science and preventive medicine ranks as among the most important of the
last century.Ancel was a brilliant and driven man whose impatience resulted
in a brutal frankness, and he could not have always been easy to work with.
His findings were, and are, challenged from many directions, but regardless
of the final outcome of the scientific debate concerning heart diseases, his
contribution will forever be a seminal one as it was the first to make the
argument that coronary disease can be linked to diet and lifestyle choices.
Towards the end of his life he lived for long periods at a house he had bought
outside Naples, keeping fit and enjoying the Mediterranean diet that he had
spent so much energy promoting. He was survived by Margaret, his son
Henry and daughter Carrie, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Another daughter died in 1991.
PAUL KOVESI (1960), who became a cherished and respected professor of
English in Western Australia after having learned the English language as an
adult, was born in Hungary in late November 1926.