George Richards Minot was a pioneer in the medical field of hematology, the study of blood and blood-forming organs. His most important contribution was the discovery that pernicious anemia could be effectively treated by feeding patients large doses of liver or liver extract. For this discovery, he shared the 1934 Nobel Prize in medicine with his Boston colleague William P. Murphy and with George Hoyt Whipple of the University of Rochester medical school.

Minot was born on December 2, 1885, in Boston, Massachusetts, the eldest of three sons of James Jackson Minot and Elizabeth Whitney Minot. The Minots were an old and well-to-do family of Boston. James Jackson Minot was a physician, and several other men on both sides of the family had been distinguished medical practitioners as well. Minot was a sickly child who spent a good deal of his early life in bed, but he grew stronger as he...