Dr. Robert C. Atkins (1930–2003) was born in Columbus, Ohio, and grew up there and in Dayton. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1951 and then specialized in cardiology at Cornell University Medical School, from which he graduated in 1955. After stints at several New York hospitals, he opened a private medical practice in New York City in 1959.
Throughout his life, Dr. Atkins had been slowly gaining weight. By 1963 the five foot four inch man weighed 202 pounds, far above his ideal weight. He had tried various diets and later reported that they didn’t work because he was always hungry. Then Atkins read about a low-carbohydrate diet based on the work of Dr. Alfred W. Pennington and others. Pennington had been the medical director at E.I. duPont de Nemours and Co. in Wilmington, Delaware, and among his responsibilities was to help company executives lose weight. After much experimentation, Pennington found that a high-protein diet resulted in a substantial loss of weight for obese individuals. He published his anecdotal evidence in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
