Fredrick J. Stare, biochemist and physician, was born in Columbus, Wisconsin, on April 11, 1910. The second child of Fredrick A. and Susan Seidell Stare, he had an older sister, Mary, and four younger siblings: Susan, Raechel, Philip, and Robert. The elder Stare was president and general manager of the Columbus Food Corporation from 1929 until 1946 when the corporation was acquired by Stokely-VanCamp. Beginning in 1944, Fredrick A. Stare also served as president and director of the Farmers' and Merchants' Union Bank and, from 1963 until his death in 1966, as chairman of the board.
Fredrick J. Stare attended the University of Wisconsin where he received a B.A. in chemistry in 1931, an M.A. in 1932, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1934. While at Wisconsin, Stare joined the Kappa Sigma social fraternity. As a graduate student he served as advisor and preceptor for the chapter during the academic year 1932-1933. In this capacity Stare participated in the 1932 Regional Convention of Kappa Sigma and was general chairman of the 13th Biennial Grand Conclave held in Madison in 1933. He also worked to refinance the chapter's house and to increase membership. Stare remained active in Kappa Sigma even after receiving his doctoral degree.
After graduating in 1934 Stare received fellowships at Washington University in St. Louis and at Cambridge University in England. Much of his research dealt with agricultural chemistry and with the application of biochemistry to medicine and human nutrition. Two additional fellowships in 1938 and 1939 gave him the opportunity to study in Hungary and Switzerland. Stare then returned to Wisconsin where he worked from 1938 to 1939 at the Bowman Cancer Foundation. He went on to study for his M.D. at the University of Chicago.
After completing his internship at Barnes Hospital, Washington University, in 1942 Stare was hired by Harvard for a position in their new Department of Nutrition. During the next thirty-five years Stare worked to educate the American public about nutrition. He published in scholarly as well as popular journals and wrote several books (Eating for Good Health; Living Nutrition; Scope Manual on Nutrition; Nutrition for Good Health; Eat OK, Feel OK; and Panic in the Pantry) as well as a nationally-syndicated column (“Food and Your Health”). By his retirement from Harvard in 1976 the Department of Nutrition was a leader in nutrition research.
Stare married Joyce Love Allen, the daughter of Governor Oscar K. Allen of Louisiana, in 1935, and they had four children (Fredrick, Allen, David, and Mary). Two years after Joyce's death in 1957, Stare remarried. His second wife, Helen Haxton Foreman, died in 1974. Stare married his third wife, Mary Bartlet Engle, in 1976. Stare died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on April 4, 2002.
