Harry Steenbock was born in 1886. he was an American biochemist and nutritionist and a professor of biochemistry at University of Wisconsin.
The history begins in 1924 when Professor Harry Steenbock discovered a method of activating vitamin D in certain food.
He developed a method for increasing the vitamin D content of food and drugs in a process of irradiation.
Steenbock has been working on ways to effectively treat rickets, which is caused by a nutritional deficiency of vitamin D
This find was eventually responsible for eliminating the childhood disease rickets.
He decided to patent his findings, based on partly on his desire to protect the public from unscrupulous or incompetent firms and from monopolization of the industry by a private patentee.
He then help to develop a innovative non-profit organization the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), to market the patent for the support of research at the University. It was established in 1925 at a cost of nine hundred dollars.
WARF licensed the steenbok patents to Quaker Oats on an exclusive basis for the production of vitamin-enriched cereal products.
In the years after 1925 and especially after World War II, WARF probably the most important reason when University was able to develop and maintain its position as one do the nation’s and world’s major research university.
Harry Steenbock (1886-1967)
