The Journal of Nutrition Vol. 129 No. 1 January 1999, pp. 13-14

Harold Martin Scott (1901-1991)

David H. Baker

Department of Animal Sciences and Division of Nutritional Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 U.S.

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H. M. Scott, or Scotty to his friends, was born in 1901 in Lincoln, Nebraska. He received his B.S. degree in 1924 from Oregon State College, his M.S. in 1927 from Kansas State College, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1938. He held faculty positions at North Dakota State College (1927-1928), Kansas State College (1928-1941), the University of Connecticut (1941-1947), and the University of Illinois (1947-1969). He married Elizabeth (Betty) Stewart Hill in 1923, and they were parents of five children.

At Kansas State College (now Kansas State University), Scotty did what is still considered to be cutting-edge research on ovulation and the effects of photoperiod on egg formation. He also did seminal work in avian genetics. During his 13-year tenure at Kansas State, Scotty published extensively in a variety of biological journals, including Poultry Science, Journal of Experimental Zoology, Science, Journal of Heredity, Physiological Reviews and Endocrinology. In conversations I had with Scotty, it was obvious that he had fond memories of his days at Kansas State.

In 1941, Scotty moved to the University of Connecticut to become Professor and Head of the Poultry Department. For the next three years he continued to emphasize reproductive physiology, but in 1945 he became interested in the growing broiler chick. Within a few years, he developed what became known as the Connecticut broiler ration. This corn-based, high energy diet, fortified with "animal-protein factor" and nicotinic acid, rapidly became the standard in the emerging commercial broiler industry.

While at Connecticut, Scotty worked with a senior professor, E. P. Singsen, and a junior professor, L. D. Matterson. A serious conflict arose between Scott and Singsen in that Singsen apparently began declaring himself the originator of the Connecticut broiler ration. Scotty became so incensed by what he perceived to be Singsen's unprofessional behavior that he left Connecticut in 1947 to take a position as Head of the Poultry Division in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois. Several years later, a young Hans Fisher, raised on a poultry farm and therefore aware of the famous Connecticut broiler ration, decided to enroll for M.S. and Ph.D. work at the University of Connecticut. In Fisher's words, he spent two miserable years at Connecticut, being forced by Singsen into doing mostly manual labor for the department. Hans and two other graduate students finally went to the Dean of the Graduate College at Connecticut and said they had had enough. The Dean said he might have predicted as much, and he advised the students to transfer to other universities. In fact, the Dean actually wrote letters of recommendation for all three students. Fisher decided to enroll at Illinois, and upon arriving, Scott greeted him enthusiasticallywith a warm hug. Fisher went on to complete his Ph.D. under Scott, as did 26 other students between 1947 and 1969.

While at Illinois, Scott continued to emphasize the broiler chick in his research. He became friends and colleagues with H. H. Mitchell, Tom Hamilton, Connor Johnson, Fred Kummerow, Dick Forbes, Harold Draper, Gaurth Hansen and Bill Rutter. I joined the Illinois faculty in 1967, after spending two years at Eli Lilly and Co., following completion of my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in 1965. Thus, having worked with Dr. Scott as a graduate student, I now had to adjust to working with him as a colleague. This was not easy in that Scotty had a strong personality, and he was much more comfortable being the leader than being an equal partner or collaborator.

In the early 1950s, Scotty became interested in semipurified and purified diets for young chicks. I recall browsing through his personal library in the early sixties and finding older issues of The Journal of Nutrition containing papers from the laboratories of Almquist at UC-Davis, Norris at Cornell and Jukes at Lederle Laboratories. Many of these papers between 1940 and 1950 were heavily underlined, and they contained extensive notes in the margins. In Almquist's 1947 review article (Almquist, 1947) entitled "Evaluation of amino acid requirements by observations on the chick," considerable discussion ensued relative to why crystalline amino acid-purified diets would not support maximal chick growth. Scotty became fascinated by this growth failure that occurred when diets based upon hydrolyzed proteins or free amino acids were fed. Hence, for roughly an eight-year period, he studied "unidentified" dietary factors, including crude antibiotic and arsenical preparations, forage juice, alfalfa meal, whey, egg yolk, fish meal and nucleotides. He concluded that as long as sufficient vitamin B-12 and niacin were in the diet, there was no such thing as an unidentified growth factor.

A key to Scotty's work with purified diets was the development of a complete mineral mix for young chicks. Walter Glista (Ph.D. with Scott in 1951) spent countless hours developing what became known as the "Glista Salt Mix." This salt mix is still used today at Illinois, although it now contains added selenium. Like several other projects in which Scotty was involved, the composition of the Glista Salt Mix was never published. Nonetheless, to this day it is still contained in several supply catalogs as a suggested mineral mix for chick purified diets. Glista's work ethic greatly impressed Scott, and for many years after Glista left Illinois, students who followed found it difficult to live up to Glista's standards. The saying "the ghost of Glista is still with us" was common among Scott's graduate students throughout the 1950s.

In 1958, Scotty published a paper entitled "The amino acid requirements of the growing chick fed crystalline amino acids (Klain et al, 1958). Growth rate of the chicks, however, was still less than optimal. This led him to a 10-year adventure to perfect a chemically defined diet for early growth of broiler chicks, and several of his Ph.D. students (G. J. Klain, D. E. Greene and W. F. Dean) did mainly growth titration studies with an array of the 12 essential amino acids required for chick growth. Scott, together with my own laboratory, had accumulated evidence that proline together with glycine or serine must be present in an amino acid mixture to achieve maximal chick growth. Work also was done in the mid 1950s by Ph.D. students Hans Fisher and Paul Griminger on vitamin K, the tryptophan-niacin interrelationship, and utilization of certain D-amino acid isomers.

In 1965, Scott, together with Ph.D. student W. F. Dean, published a paper (Dean and Scott, 1965) describing what many considered to be the culmination of many years of work on the Illinois crystalline amino acid chick diet. Near maximal growth was finally achieved. This diet, although further revised later, began being used as a reference standard. Ph.D. students W. F. Dean, R. E. Smith and R. A. Zimmerman used the "Dean" diet as well as other intact-protein diets to develop the plasma free amino acid method for determining amino acid requirements, and also for detecting amino acid deficiencies and excesses in various intact proteins.

Shortly after Professor Scott came to Illinois, he quickly learned that his graduate student trainees had absolutely no idea how to determine sex of newly hatched chicks (this is not an easy taskfor anyone). Because of his background and expertise in classical genetics, Scotty was able to develop a line of crossbred color-sexed chickens in which the newly hatched males were yellow and the females brown. This necessitated maintaining both a male line (New Hampshire) and a female line (synthetic Columbian) of chickens at the Illinois Poultry Farm. The so-called Illinois synthetic crossbred chick is still in existence today at the University of Illinois, and many past (and present) graduate students have benefited from knowing immediately the sex of each hatched chick.

Scotty was a nutritional scientist who was known for thoroughness and precision. He was almost always present, leading the way, when purified diets were being prepared at the Illinois chick lab. He instilled into the minds of his students that they must always carefully and accurately measure food intake, likely a position influenced by H. H. Mitchell's strong views on this subject (but not a view held by W. C. Rose, cf. Baker, 1984). He had few peers when it came to a thorough understanding of all aspects of avian anatomy, physiology, nutrition, reproduction, egg laying and genetics. During his days at Kansas State, Scotty coached a Poultry Judging Team that on five occasions (1929, 1932, 1933, 1938 and 1940) won the Midwest Intercollegiate Poultry Judging Contest. He was articulate and he was a very good writer. In addition to receiving virtually every research award available from the Poultry Science Association (PSA), he also received the coveted Ralston Purina Teaching Award of that society in 1969. He was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Nutrition (now ASNS) in 1970. He served as president of PSA in 1948, and on three separate occasions (1957-58, 1964-65 and 1966-67) he served as acting head of the Animal Sciences Department at Illinois. He was elected to the Poultry Hall of Fame in 1971.

Scotty was an avid sportsman, as participant, coach and spectator. He continued to play softball late into his 50s. He was considered by his colleagues and friends to be an expert freshwater fisherman. Indeed, he knew as well as anyone the famous Boundary Waters fishing area of Northern Minnesota, bordering Canada. For those who were privileged to go with him on one of these canoe/portage fishing trips, a bass, lake trout, walleye and northern pike bonanza resulted. His last fishing trip to Knife Lake in the Boundary Waters was in late May of 1970. Faculty colleagues Leveille, Draper, Hinds, Carlisle, Kastelic and Baker were participants, as was Scotty's young grandson, Scott. Although almost 70 years old, Scotty still managed to swim the portages, his canoe in tow, and amazingly, he picked up and carried his canoe over several portages that were navigable by foot.

Dr. H. M. Scott was a gem of great valueas a teacher and as a research scientist. He was proud and he was toughbut he was also giving and compassionate. He was devoted to his wife, Betty, and together they mentored many young faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois. His life and his work made a difference.

	FOOTNOTES

Manuscript received 13 October 1998. Revision accepted 19 October 1998.

	ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Appreciation is expressed to Hans Fisher and Paul Griminger for their suggestions and insight toward preparation of this biography.

	LITERATURE CITED

• Almquist H. J. Evaluation of amino acid requirements by observations on the chick. J. Nutr. 1947; 34:543-563
• Baker D. H. Equalized versus ad libitum feeding. Nutr. Rev. 1984; 42:269-273[Medline]
• Dean W. F., Scott H. M. The development of an amino acid reference diet for the early growth of chicks. Poult. Sci. 1965; 44:803-808[Medline]
• Klain G. J., Scott H. M., Johnson B. C. The amino acid requirement of the growing chick fed crystalline amino acids. Poult. Sci. 1958; 37:976-977

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