Stuart Patton

Stuart Joseph Patton (November 2, 1920 – October 9, 2017) was an American dairy scientist known for his research in the fields of milk chemistry and the biological processes that regulate milk synthesis in the mammary gland.

He graduated from Radnor High School in Wayne, Pennsylvania, in 1938 and received his Bachelor of Science degree from Penn State University in 1943.

And, coming full circle, in some of his final research he collaborated with R. V. Josephson, son of his first mentor at Penn State in the 1940s.

A scholarship is named in honor of D. V. Josephson and Patton at Penn State, awarded to graduate students and faculty on a yearly rotating basis.

He married Colleen Lavelle in 1945, to whose support in their 71-year marriage he often said he owed his success.

They had seven children, four sons and three daughters.

After serving as an ensign in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he pursued graduate work at Ohio State University, receiving his master's degree in 1947 and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1948, working under the direction of Donald V. Josephson.

Their collaboration continued at Penn State, where both returned in 1948, Josephson as head of the Department of Dairy Husbandry and Patton as assistant professor.

He was professor of dairy science/food science at Pennsylvania State University from 1949 to 1980 and adjunct professor in the Department of Neurosciences, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, and in the School of Family Studies and Consumer Sciences at San Diego State University until his retirement in 2001.

Patton was born in Ebenezer, New York, to George Patton and Ina Neher Patton.

While at Penn State, Patton served as a consultant to The Borden Company (1952–72), the U. S. Department of Agriculture (1958≠61) and International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc. (1965–75), where his work resulted in three patents.

In addition to the textbook Patton co-wrote with R. Jenness (1959), Principles of Dairy Chemistry, New York and London), he addressed a broader audience in a Scientific American article “Milk” (1969, 221: 59–68) and in his final publication: Milk: Its Remarkable Contribution to Human Health and Well-being (2004, New York), a comprehensive treatment of its subject and advocacy for its benefits.

The Stuart Patton Auditorium in the Agricultural Sciences and Industries Building at Penn State is dedicated in his honor “for his inquisitive nature and skill in imparting knowledge; for his enthusiasm for science and uncompromising respect for peers.”

At Penn State, "in the 1960s and 1970s, Patton would lead a departmental redirection into lipid research with important insights on mammary gland milk fat synthesis,” but he attributed the turn in his research from the characterization of milk lipids to milk synthesis and secretions to Robert McCarthy. Patton's research in this area is summarized in Biomedical Aspects of Lactation. While lipid research continued to be a focus of Patton's investigations on the various expeditions he participated on with Andrew Benson, (for example, the importance of triglyceride in the salmon's heart function; the chemical characterization of unique lipids in marine animals), an investigation that demonstrated the high food value of the red tide organism (the phytoplankton bloom), remains under explored. While working in John O’Brien's lab in the Department of Neurosciences, School of Medicine, UCSD, with funding support from NIH, Patton began extensive work analyzing the nature of human milk, with special emphasis on its mucins.

He discovered that the mucins MUC1 and MUC-X, which are transferred to the milk fat globule upon secretion, have greater size in human milk and therefore may carry greater protection against infections and injurious environmental agents.

In the 55 years of his active research career Patton collaborated with more than 100 scientists from around the world, including with his twin sons, John and Richard, who both went on to successful careers in the sciences, each of them writing dissertations under colleagues of their father.

In 1966 Patton became the College of Agriculture's first Evan Pugh Professor.

Patton's collaboration with Andrew Benson, with whom he shared a common interest in the structure and function of the cell membrane, motivated his move to UCSD after his retirement from Penn State in 1980.

Some of Patton's earliest research in collaboration with D. V. Josephson revealed that a change in methionine in milk was responsible for the off flavor produced when milk is exposed to light.

In other of his early work Patton discovered that malonic dialdehyde is a product of lipid oxidation and the basic reactant in the thiobarbituric acid and Kreis tests for lipid oxidation.

One of the first to use gas chromatography, mass spectrometry and thin layer chromatography in flavor research, Patton proved, using these techniques, that methyl sulfide is a key component in the flavor of milk, methods his student Allen Day, who went on to become vice-president for research at IFF, put to good use.