George Richards Minot (1885-1950)

Massachusetts, U.S.A. His ancestor, George Minot, had migrated to America

in 1630, from Saffron Walden, England. His father, James Jackson Minot, was a physician, and his mother was Elizabeth Whitney.

and he published two articles on butterflies. He went to

Harvard University and there took his A.B. degree in 1908, his M.D. in 1912, and gained an honorary degree of Sc.D. in 1928.

Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital and was

later appointed to a more senior post there.
In 1922 he became Physician-in-Chief of the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital of Harvard University, and later was appointed to the Staff of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

in the disorders of the blood with which his name

is associated and he published during his life many papers on this and other subjects. Arthritis, cancer, dietary deficiencies, the part played by diet (vitamin B deficiency) in the production of so-called alcoholic polyneuritis and the social aspects of disease were among the subjects of his papers.

tissues and polycythaemia, but his most important contributions to knowledge

were made in his studies of anaemia. His name will always be associated with the therapy of pernicious anaemia, in which he first became interested in 1914, but it was not until later that he, like William P. Murphy, became impressed by the work of George Hoyt Whipple on the treatment of experimental forms of anaemia in dogs, and in 1926 he and Murphy described the effective treatment of pernicious anaemia by means of liver. 

organizations in his own country and abroad, and served as

Editor of several medical publications. Among the many honours and distinctions he received, may be mentioned: the Cameron Prize in Practical Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh, in 1930 (jointly with W. P. Murphy), the Popular Science Monthly Gold Medal and Annual Award for 1930 (jointly with G. H. Whipple), and the John Scott Medal of the City of Philadelphia.

were two daughters and one son by this marriage.
After a

long and busy life, during which he made many important contributions to medical knowledge, especially to that of diseases of the blood, Minot died, full of honours, in 1950.

1934 Nobel Prize with George Hoyt Whipple and William P. Murphy for their pioneering work on pernicious

anemia and helping the world.