MANN, ScD, M.D., Dr. George V. Of Manchester (1917-2013). A retired professor from Vanderbilt Medical School in Nashville, TN, and noted medical researcher on the effects of cholesterol on human heart health, died at the NHC Nursing Home in McMinnville, TN on July 17, 2013 at the age of 95. Dr. Mann was born in 1917 in Fort Dodge in north-central Iowa, and was raised on several farms in the area, where his father was a sharecropper. He graduated in 1939 from Cornell College in Iowa with a degree in chemistry, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He obtained a Doctor of Science in biochemistry and an MD from Johns Hopkins University in 1945. He interned in medicine at the Osler Service of Johns Hopkins University from 1945-1946 and became a resident at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston in 1946-1947, and spent one year on the Joslin Diabetes Service of the New England Deaconess Hospital in 1948. In 1949, he joined the Harvard School of Public Health where he was an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association. He was also appointed an assistant professor of nutrition at Harvard University in 1949 and in 1955, became an associate director of the Framingham Heart Program, an ongoing cardiovascular study on residents of the town of Framingham, MA that began in 1948. In 1958, he moved to Vanderbilt University where he became a professor in medicine and biochemistry, and a Career Investigator with the National Institute of Health, positions he held until his retirement in 1987. During the 1960's and 1970's, Dr. Mann conducted field studies on the effects of human diet on cholesterol levels on Alaskan Eskimos, Congolese pygmies, and Maasai of Tanzania and Kenya. These studies led Dr. Mann to a contrarian viewpoint that human heart disease was not the result of the consumption of foods like meat and eggs that are high in cholesterol, but are instead the result of other factors such as a lack of exercise. In addition to over 200 articles published in medical journals, he expressed his views in several books, including: Coronary Heart Disease: The Dietary Sense and Nonsense (1993). A varsity letterman in wrestling at Cornell College, Dr. Mann had a lifetime interest in the effects of physical fitness on heart health, was a technical observer at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, and published several books on this topic, including The Care and Feeding of Athletes (1980). Dr. Mann was married to Jean Ebersbach Mann from 1946 until her death in 1994. Jean Mann, a nursing graduate from Johns Hopkins University in 1943, was the Director of Nursing at Nashville General Hospital during the 1960's to early 1980's. During the 1990's, Dr. Mann retired to a log cabin on Cardwell Mountain near McMinnville, TN. Dr. Mann is survived by five children: Ted Mann of Winston-Salem, NC, Marian Mann of Tsaile, AZ, Daniel Mann of Fairbanks, AK, Nathaniel Mann of Viola, TN and Paul Mann of Austin, TX, along with four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Memorial services will be private. Online condolences may be made at www.coffeecountyfuneralchapel.com. COFFEE COUNTY FUNERAL CHAPEL is honored to serve the family of George V. Mann, (931) 723-3330.
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Published in The Tennessean on July 27, 2013
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