Professor Alan Ward had a long, distinguished and varied career. Having conducted pioneering research in the production of gelatine, and after a move to the University of Leeds, he was responsible for establishing the discipline of food science in what was to become the renowned Procter Department of Food Science. He then spent 15 years as chairman of the Food Standards Committee overseeing a series of important reports on aspects of the nation's diet.

Alan Gordon Ward was born in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, the third of three sons of Lily and Lionel Ward. He went from the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School to Trinity College, Cambridge, on an exhibition, subsequently a scholarship, where he read natural sciences.

His first publication, jointly with J.D.Bernall, appeared in the Zeitschrift für Kristallographie and was based on work carried out in his final undergraduate year. He then moved on to postgraduate work in colloid science and mathematics which led to The Nature of Crystals (1936).

As a lecturer at North Staffordshire Technical College in the late 1930s he published widely in the local Labour paper under the pseudonym Alex Gordon and worked closely with several Labour politicians who would hold senior offices, including Dr Barnett Stross and the future Lord Wigg.

Shortly after the outbreak of war Ward was recruited to the Ministry of Supply to work in the Projectile Development Establishment, initially in Cardigan and then at Fort Halstead, Kent. The work involved studies of the mechanical, thermal and other physical properties of cordite, and he went on to investigate plastic rocket propellants.

After the war he moved to the Building Research Station to study the mechanical properties of building materials and in 1949 was appointed as the first director of the British Glue and Gelatine Research Association. Laboratories were established in North London, and his personal research for the next decade concentrated on the development of a new process for gelatine production. For his achievements he was appointed OBE in 1959.

In the same year he was appointed Professor of Leather Industries at the University of Leeds with the remit to develop new programmes to sustain the department in the face of the decline of the leather industry. The chosen area for development was food science, and in 1962 the first cohort of students was admitted to the new degree. New combined degrees were introduced in succeeding years, establishing links to the main basic sciences of bacteriology, biochemistry and physiology.

In 1965 Ward was invited to become chair of the Food Standards Committee of what was then the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to advise the Ministry and the Department of Health, among others, about the regulations for the control of food quality, composition and advertising. In the course of the next 15 years the committee produced important reports on bread and flour, food labelling, novel protein foods, water in foods, beer, jam and infant milk. For his work in this area he was appointed CBE in 1972.

Alongside membership of many learned societies, Ward was a founder member of the Institute of Food Science and Technology, serving as president in 1976 and as a longstanding council member.

He was also a founder member of the scientific committee of the British Nutrition Foundation, serving as its chairman in 1977. He was a Fellow of the (US) Institute of Food Technologists and an honorary Fellow of the Australian IFST.

Outside his professional life he was a keen musician and an accomplished pianist. Widely read, he also had a practical bent involving gardening and latterly toy-making. As a young man he was a proficient sprinter and spin bowler and throughout his life had a general love of all games.

In 1938 he married Jean Chapman who predeceased him in 2004. He is survived by his two daughters and his son.

Professor Alan Ward, CBE, food scientist, was born on April 18, 1914. He died on October 3, 2007, aged 93