Prof. William B. Grant

Dr. William B. Grant has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley (1971). He had a 30-year career in laser remote sensing of atmospheric constituents including 15 years at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He published the first paper suggesting that diet affected risk of Alzheimer’s disease in 1997. He showed that solar UVB reduces risk for mortality rates for 13 types of cancer in 2002 in an ecological study in 2002. He retired from NASA in 2004 and moved to San Francisco where he formed Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center to work on health studies full time. His goal was to do research on solar UVB and vitamin D for reducing risk of disease and how dietary factors affected risk of chronic and infectious diseases. In April 2020, he published the first article suggesting the likely role of vitamin D in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19. In November 2023, he published a major review on dietary risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. He has published over 500 articles, reviews, editorials, and letters to the editor including 325 regarding vitamin D, 179 regarding cancer, 93 regarding UVB, 50 regarding diet, and 25 regarding COVID-19.