Harry Erwin Nursten (August 1927 – 20 December 2011) was a British Food Chemist, specialising in Flavour chemistry at the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Reading.
He was born in Czechoslovakia in 1927, his family, was fortunate to escape to England shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.
By moving to Ilkley in Yorkshire before the outbreak of the World War II.
He attended Ilkley Grammar School and read for a degree in Colour Chemistry and Dyeing at the University of Leeds.
He taught at Nottingham Technical College and the Procter Department of Leather Science at University of Leeds.
Following two sabbaticals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UC Davis, he moved into the area of food and flavour science.
In 1976, he was appointed Chair of Food Science at the University of Reading.
Following the merger of the National College of Food Technology and the Department of Food Science, he became Head of Department of one of the biggest Food Science Departments in the UK.
In 1992, he ensured that the Hugh Macdonald Sinclair endowment was used to set up a new centre for human nutrition research at the University of Reading.