Extracted from his obituary:

Robert McCance, the former Professor of Experimental Medecine at Cambridge University, was best known for the pioneering Food Composition Tables which he compiled with Dr Elsie Widdowson in 1940.  As a biochemist, physiologist and registered doctor, however, McCance possessed a breadth of knowledge, vision and experience far beyond that of a conventional nutririonist.  His researches embraced the physiology of new-born babies, normal and retarded growth, the problem of feeding in the Third World, even the search for an effective cure for sea-sickness.  His work on salt defficiency has helped doctors to appreciate the importance of fluids and sodium - today, the maintenance of fluid and chemical balance has become a standard part of the treatment of patients suffering from a wide range of conditions as well as those recovering from surgery.  He believed that the correct experimental animal for the study of human disease was man, and in many cases, himself!

The son of an Ulster linen merchant, John McCance, he was born on the 9th Dec 1898 and educated at St Bees School, Cumberland.  He served in the First World War with the Royal Naval Air Service, flying observation aircraft of the midship turrets of the battle-cruiser Indomitable.  Afterwards he went up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.  He chose to read Natural Sciences because the troubles in Ireland seemed to endanger the agricultural career on which he had set his heart.

After concluding his medical studies at King's College Hospital, London, he obtained a grant to work in the biochemical and diabetic Department.  In his spare time he made analyses on the carbohydrate content of cooked fruit and vegetables.  It was in the hospital kitchens that he met Dr Elsie Widdowson who would be his scientific partner for the next 60 years.  As he put it, he was the acid and she was the neutralising base.  His study of a patient with polycythema rubra vera led him to conclusions that were published in the Lancet, eliciting an invitation from J A Ryle, the Regius Professor of Physic, to be a Reader in Medecine at Cambridge.  In 1938 he became a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College.

During the Second World War he was chairman of a joint Medical Research Council and Royal Navy Committee on Survival at Sea where, amongst many other things, he helped to design covered inflatable life rafts.  After retiring from his Cambridge chair he became the caretaker director of the Medical Research Council's infantile malnutrition unit in Kampala, Uganda.  Back home in 1968 he continued to collaborate with Dr Widdowson for another 20 years.  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1948 and appointed CBE in 1953.

He was a superb teacher, who demanded writing as accurate as his own.  Sir Andrew Huxley and Sir Douglas Black are just two of the eminent scientists who profited from his training.  Few, however, were tempted to emulate the great nutritionist's own eating habits!  He would have a cup of black coffee and perhaps an apple for lunch but in the evening would sit down to an enormous dinner with large helpings of vegetables, especially potatoes.

He married Mary MacGregor in 1922, and they had a son, Colin, and a daughter, Catriona.  He died on 5 Mar 1993.