Professor Michael Crawford

Professor Michael Crawford has been the Director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition since 1990. Having worked in the east end of London on maternal nutrition and health with Newham, the Homerton and Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, he is now at Reproductive Physiology at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Campus of Imperial College, London. His special interest is in the role that lipids and essential fatty acids play in the cellular signalling systems, meaning the key interaction between nutrition affecting membrane lipids and gene expression.

Professor Crawford has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers and three books. Amongst his several honours and prizes, he was elected by his peers to the Hall of Fame at the Royal Society of Medicine in 2010, and in 2015 was awarded the Chevreul Medal for his research on DHA identification as a major determinant of brain growth and the plausible evolution of the human brain. He collaborates in research internationally and is much in demand as a lecturer worldwide.

At the Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine (1965-89), Professor Crawford equipped and computerised his laboratory to engage in lipid nutrition and showed that deprivation of the essential fatty acids used for the brain’s structure and function resulted in loss of brain cell numbers in the third generation. In 1972, Crawford and Sinclair published the first description of the dependence of the brain on arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acids, and drew attention to the evolutionary implications. Crawford also demonstrated clear evidence of maternal nutrition being a causative factor in premature birth and complications and low birthweight.