Robert Alexander McCance FRS^[1] (1898 – 3 March 1993) was Professor of Experimental Medicine at the University of Cambridge.

Born in Ulster, the son of a linen merchant, he was educated at St. Bees School, before wartime service in the Royal Naval Air Service, piloting an observation aircraft from a warship. After the war he read natural sciences at Cambridge University and the went on to study medicine at King's College Hospital in London. He then began a scientific career in the study of nutrition.

With colleague H. Shipp, he published The Chemistry of Flesh Foods and their Losses on Cooking in 1933. He co-authored the long-standard text and reference book, The Chemical Composition of Foods in 1940 with Elsie Widdowson, his science co-worker. Their work became known as the basis for modern Western nutritional thinking, with editions in print from 1940 to 2002. McCance and Widdowson played a leading part in wartime rationing and 1940s government nutrition efforts.

He was later the director of the Medical Research Council's infantile malnutrition unit in Kampala, Uganda. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1948 and made CBE in 1953. He died on 5 March, 1993. ^[2]

In 1993 the British Nutrition Foundation issued McCance & Widdowson – A Scientific Partnership of 60 years ( McCance and Widdowson: A Scientific Partnership of 60 Years, 1933-93 - A Commemorative Volume Prepared as a Tribute to the 60-year Scientific Partnership Between Robert Alexander McCance CBE, FRS and Elsie May Widdowson CBE, FRS Margaret Ashwell (Editor) ISBN 0-907667-07-4 )

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