Lionel Pett
Lionel Bradley Pett was born November 12, 1909 in Winnipeg, Manitoba to parents Sadie Bradley (Saunders) and Lionel Henry Pett. He earned a BSA (1930) from the Ontario Agriculture College, an MA (1932) and PhD (1934) from the University of Toronto, and an MD (1942) from the University of Alberta. He also attended the University of Stockholm in 1934-35 and Cambridge University in 1936.A senior Fellow in biochemistry at the University of Toronto in 1933, Pett joined the University of Alberta as a lecturer of biochemistry in 1936 and worked in this role until being made director, in 1941, of the Nutrition Division of the Department of Pensions and Health in Ottawa.
Advisor to Ration Administration with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Penitentiaries Branch’s Committee on Reconstruction, Pett was also advisor to Foods Administration of Canada and secretary of the Canadian Council on Nutrition. In 1942, he was nutritional advisor to the Government of Bermuda and in 1943, advisor to the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture.
A member of the Ontario and Canadian Medical Associations, Pett, in 1941, patented an apparatus designed to diagnose A-avitaminosis in humans.
Pett married Lois Eileen McAfee in 1941; they had two sons, Hugh and Robert.