William Banting

Born in 1797, William Banting was an English undertaker from a well-known family business in St James's Street, London. He is remembered less for his trade than for the candid account he published of his own health troubles and dramatic weight loss.

After years of unsuccessful attempts to reduce his weight, Banting followed a diet recommended by his doctor, William Harvey. In 1863 he published Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public, a short personal testimonial describing the regimen and the improvements he felt in his health. The pamphlet became widely read and helped popularize a low-carbohydrate style of dieting long before modern diet culture.

Banting died in 1878, but his name lived on in an unusual way: for a time, especially in Britain, people used "banting" as a verb meaning to diet. That lasting bit of language shows how strongly his small book entered everyday life.