Roy Walford
Encyclopedia
Roy Lee Walford, M. D. (June 29, 1924 San Diego, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, USA – April 27, 2004) was a pioneer in the field of caloric restriction. He died at age 79 of respiratory failure as a complication of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a form of motor neuron disease caused by the degeneration of upper and lower neurons, located in the ventral horn of the spinal cord and the cortical neurons that provide their efferent input...
(commonly known as Lou Gehrig
Lou Gehrig
Henry Louis "Lou" Gehrig , nicknamed "The Iron Horse" for his durability, was an American Major League Baseball first baseman. He played his entire 17-year baseball career for the New York Yankees . Gehrig set several major league records. He holds the record for most career grand slams...
’s Disease). He was a leading advocate of calorie restriction
Calorie restriction
Caloric restriction , or calorie restriction, is a dietary regimen that restricts calorie intake, where the baseline for the restriction varies, usually being the previous, unrestricted, intake of the subjects...
as a method of life extension and health improvement.
Career highlights
Dr. Walford is credited with significantly furthering research on the discovery that laboratory mice, when fed a diet that restricted their caloric intake by 50% yet maintained nutritional requirements, could almost double their expected life span.He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
in 1948. He completed his internship at Gorgas Hospital
Gorgas Hospital
Gorgas Hospital was a U.S. Army hospital in Panama City, Panama named for Army Surgeon General William C. Gorgas .Built on the site of an earlier French hospital called L'Hospital Notre Dame de Canal, it was originally christened Ancon Hospital by the Americans. It was originally built of wood,...
, Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, and served his residency at the V.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles. He then served two years in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
.
Dr. Walford joined the faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1954. He became a Professor of Pathology at the UCLA School of Medicine in 1966. He became Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emeritus, for UCLA, when he left to join the crew of Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2 is a structure originally built to be an artificial, materially-closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona by Space Biosphere Ventures, a joint venture whose principal officers were John P. Allen, inventor and Executive Director, and Margret Augustine, CEO...
in 1991.
While at UCLA, Dr. Walford served in the following roles:
- Director of the Blood Bank and of the Hematology Division of the Clinical Laboratories (1959–1980)
- Director of the School of Medical Technology (1962–1972)
- Chairman of the Vivarium Committee (1965–1968)
In addition to his service at UCLA, he was an expert advisor in immunology for the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
from 1969 to 1984, was a senatorial delegate to the White House Conference on Aging in 1981, and a member of the National Institute on Aging
National Institute on Aging
The National Institute on Aging ' is a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health , located in Baltimore, Maryland.The NIA leads a broad scientific effort to understand the nature of aging and to extend the healthy, active years of life...
.
His honors and awards include:
- Levine Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology
- Research Award of the American Aging Association
- Kleemeier Award from the Gerontological Society of America
- Henderson Award from the American Geriatrics Society
- The Senator Alan Cranston Award
- Infinity Award of the American Academy of Anti-Aging MedicineAmerican Academy of Anti-Aging MedicineThe American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine is a United States registered 501 nonprofit organization that promotes the field of anti-aging medicine and trains and certifies physicians in this specialty. As of 2011, approximately 26,000 practitioners had been given certificates...
- Asteroid #4629 was named after him by its discoverer (E. Helene) in 1986
Dr. Walford and his work were featured in print in dozens of articles in popular publications such as Omni
Omni (magazine)
OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction...
, Discover
Discover (magazine)
Discover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...
, and Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
. During his life he also made dozens of featured appearances on various television shows.
Roulette winnings
In 1949, while on vacation during medical school, Walford and Albert HibbsAlbert Hibbs
Albert Roach Hibbs was a noted mathematician known worldwide as "the voice of JPL". He was born in Akron, Ohio on October 19, 1924 and died on February 24, 2003 of complications following heart surgery....
, a mathematics graduate student, used statistical analysis of biased roulette
Roulette
Roulette is a casino game named after a French diminutive for little wheel. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number or a range of numbers, the colors red or black, or whether the number is odd or even....
wheels to "break the bank" in Reno. They tracked the results of the spins, determined which wheels were biased, and then bet heavily on the ones which were unbalanced. The casinos eventually realized that Walford and his friend knew what they were doing and threw them out. A Life Magazine photographer captured the pair drinking milk and counting their chips in a photograph published in the December 7, 1949 issue. Their methods were also mentioned in the roulette book The Eudaemonic Pie
The Eudaemonic Pie
The Eudaemonic Pie is a 1985 book by American author Thomas A. Bass, about a group of University of California, Santa Cruz physics graduate students who in the late 1970s and early 1980s designed and employed miniaturized computers, hidden in specially modified shoes, to help predict the outcome...
by Thomas Bass
Thomas Bass
Thomas Alden Bass is an American writer and professor in literature and history.- Biography :Bass graduated with an honors A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1973 and earned his Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1980...
. Different sources have the pair winning anywhere from $6,500 (Life Magazine) to $42,000 (an obituary by the Gerontology Research Group); the high end is more likely, as Walford was reputed to have paid for part of his medical school education and a house from his winnings. The pair also bought a yacht and sailed the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
for over a year.
Biosphere 2
Dr. Walford was one of the eight “crew members” who were sealed inside Biosphere 2Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2 is a structure originally built to be an artificial, materially-closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona by Space Biosphere Ventures, a joint venture whose principal officers were John P. Allen, inventor and Executive Director, and Margret Augustine, CEO...
where they lived from September 26, 1991 to September 26, 1993. Dr. Walford served as the crew's physician. During his stay in Biosphere 2, the crew found that they could not grow as much food as anticipated, so Dr. Walford convinced the crew to follow his calorie restriction diet. It is claimed that this action “produced dramatic weight loss and improved health.” Despite this, in November of the first year the crew decided to open a cache of emergency food supplies grown outside of the bubble to supplement their meager diets.
Published works
Walford authored several books, and set out his dietary beliefs in the bestseller Beyond the 120-Year Diet. In addition, he published at least 340 scientific papers, mainly focused on the biology of aging.Dr. Walford authored or co-authored the following books:
External links
- www.walford.com, Dr. Walford's web page
- UCLA “In Memoriam, Roy Walford, M.D.” tribute page, retrieved September 28, 2005
- "Sign Posts of Dr. Roy Walford", a full length documentary