George Minot

George Richards Minot ( ; December 2, 1885 – February 25, 1950) was an American medical researcher who shared the 1934 Nobel Prize with George Hoyt Whipple and William P. Murphy for their pioneering work on pernicious anemia. Early life George Richards Minot was born in Boston, Massachusetts to James Jackson Minot (1853–1938) and Elizabeth Whitney. He was namesake of his great-great-grandfather George Richards Minot (1758–1802). His father was a physician; his father's cousin was anatomist Charles Sedgwick Minot (1852–1914); one of his great-grandfathers was James Jackson (1777–1867), co-founder of Massachusetts General Hospital. He developed interest, first, in the natural sciences, and then, in medicine. Education Minot obtained his B.A. from Harvard College in 1908, where he was elected to The Owl Club, and obtained his M.D. degree in 1912 from the Harvard Medical School. Between 1913 and 1915, he worked in the William Henry Howell's lab at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, studying blood thinning proteins, such as antithrombin. In 1915, he secured a junior position on the medical staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he started research on blood anemia. During the first world war, he served as a surgeon in for the US Army. As part of those duties, he worked with Alice Hamilton to understand what was causing workers at a munitions plant in New Jersey to become ill. They eventually discovered that skin contact with TNT led to the sicknesses. Career In 1917, he came to Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital in Boston; he became chief of medical services in 1923, and was appointed physician-in-chief in 1934. In addition, Minot became professor of medicine at the Harvard University, and was appointed director of the Thorndik Memorial Laboratory at Boston City Hospital. He also worked in the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital as a staff member. He was a member of the Pernicious Anemia Committee at Harvard and served on the Anti-Anemia Preparation Advisory Board of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia.