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Abstract
Originally discovered in 1935 by nutritionist Clive McCay, the concept of calorie restriction to inhibit ageing was pursued by Walford at UCLA. He found that restricting the calorie intake of young mice could increase their lifespan by 50%. In the 1970s, working with postdoctoral fellow Rick Weindruch, Walford showed that the diet could prolong the lifespan of middle-aged mice by 10-20%. Weindruch, who went on to concentrate on immunological aspects of ageing, says when he met Walford in 1975, the biology of ageing was a "sleepy discipline" with few labs working on it. "Now there are hundreds", says Weindruch, "Walford was truly a visionary".