Abe Anellis (1914–2001),[1] was a food microbiologist.
Anellis was born Avraam "Abrosha" Anelis in previously Mogilëv, Russian Empire on 15 February 1914.
Anellis's father emigrated from Russia and established himself in the United States, settling in Chicago, Illinois. Anellis and his mother remained in Russia to endure on their own the vicissitudes of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and civil war. At one point, Anellis became separated from his mother and spent several years in a Bolshevik-run orphanage until his mother was able to locate him. In 1923 they emigrated to Chicago.
Anellis attended Crane Technical College in Chicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning his tuition and living expenses working in a spice factory and as an usher at the Chicago Civic Opera. He received his M.S. degree from the University of Illinois in 1940. At the beginning of 1940, while still working on his doctorate, he was hired by the Illinois Department of Health, in Carbondale, working as a clinical bacteriologist beginning in 1940 and in July 1941 he joined the Northern Regional Research Laboratory of the Bureau of Agriculture and Industrial Chemistry in the Agriculture and Research Administration of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in Peoria, Illinois, working on the use of microbiologically produced fermentation of farm by-products for production of grain alcohol, including ethanol.
In February 1944 Anellis joined the newly created U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps Food and Container Institute in Chicago, and worked on problems of the microbiological safety of foods being shipped overseas to U.S. servicemen. Dehydrated milk and dehydrated eggs were products developed at this time for which Anellis tested the microbiological safety. Anellis's research focused on strains of bacteria which were especially heat-resistant, including salmonella and clostridium botulinum. This led to the consideration of the use of gamma radiation as a food preservative, and Anellis began research on the radiation resistance of bacteria in canned foods. In 1963 the Food and Container Institute was closed and its operations were moved to the U.S. Army Natick Research and Development Laboratories in Natick, Massachusetts. Anellis continued his research on the radiation resistance of bacteria at the Natick Labs until his retirement in 1977. While working at the Natick Labs he also participated in the program to develop foods and food preservations for NASA. Anellis was an advocate of irradiation of foods as a food preservative and preventative against microbiological contamination, and testified before the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the safety of human consumption of foods irradiated at low dosage.[2][3]
Upon retirement, Anellis moved to Leesburg, Florida and spent part of his leisure as a volunteer at the Lake Regional Medical Center, after turning down an opportunity to teach microbiology at Lake-Sumter Community College. During the first few years of retirement, he returned to Massachusetts in the summers to supervise the research projects that he had already begun. He died on 28 August 2001 in Leesburg, Florida.
More detail is available in "Abe Anellis & the Microbiology of Irradiated Food".