February 26, 1998
by Malcolm C. Bourne
Geneva, NY - Dr. David B. Hand, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry
and former chairman of the Department of Food Science and Technology (FS&T)
at Cornell University at the New York State 
Agricultural
Experiment Station, died in Annapolis, Maryland, on January 22, 1998, at
the age of 92 years.
Dr. Hand received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Pomona College in California and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cornell University in 1926. While obtaining his doctorate, he assisted Professor Sumner in his Nobel Prize-winning work on the enzyme urease. He taught biochemistry at Cornell for 14 years, spent two years in Washington, D.C., as a National Research Council Fellow, and five years as Technical Director of Sheffield Farms Company. He joined the Experiment Station at Geneva as Professor of Biochemistry and became chairman of the department of FS&T in 1947. He retired in December 1967. Highlighting his tenure as department chairman was the construction of the Food Research Laboratory in 1960, housing laboratories with the most advanced scientific instrumentation and an outstanding fruit and vegetable processing pilot plant.
Dr. Hand had an abiding interest in the use of food technology to improve nutrition in America and in developing countries. He served as a member of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, a member of the Advisory Committee on Research of the Food and Drug Administration, and a member of the Council on Foods and Nutrition of the American Medical Association. He was a consultant to the Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Development of the U.S. Public Health Service and engaged in nutrition surveys in Iran, Pakistan, and Lebanon. He was a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Institute for Nutrition for Central America and Panama and the Pan American Health Organization. In 1953, he spent six months in Taiwan as a food processing specialist for the U.S. Agency for International Development. He designed the food technology program for the Cornell University of the Philippines collaborative program in Los Banos in the 1960s.
Dr. Hand's research was directed toward the processing and nutritive value of plant proteins including soybean protein, measurement of food quality, and use of food additives. He had more than 80 publications. His work was acknowledged by two prestigious awards from the Institute of Food Technologists. In 1970, he received the International Award for international exchange and ideas in food technology, and, in 1977, he received the Babcock-Hart Award for significant contributions to food technology resulting in improved public health through some aspects of nutrition.
Dr. Hand was a consummate gentleman whose high expectations of himself extended to others as reflected in his tactful but firm leadership of the FS&T department. His word was absolutely reliable. Dr. Hand loved tennis, golf, and sailing, and continued sailing and golf after retirement. He was married to Eleanor Foote Hand, who died in 1996. He is survived by two children, Clifford of Tuscaloosa, AL, and Sylvia Pott of Orleans, MA, six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
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Contact: Linda McCandless, Communications Services
Telephone: (315) 787-2417
e-mail: llm3@cornell.edu
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