George Hoyt Whipple (August 28, 1878 – February 1, 1976)[1] was an American physician, pathologist, biomedical researcher, and medical school educator and administrator.

Whipple shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934 with George Richards Minot and William Parry Murphy "for their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anemia".

[4][5][6] The interactions Whipple had with biochemists Russell Henry Chittenden and Lafayette Mendel during his senior year at Yale left an indelible mark on his life and career.

During this year, he worked at Dr. Holbrook Military School in Ossining, New York, teaching mathematics and science, and serving as an athletic coach.

[1] To gain experience and subsidize his medical school studies, Whipple applied for and was accepted to a teaching assistantship in John J. Abel's Department of Physiological Chemistry.

[1] In 1921, through the persistence of University of Rochester President Benjamin Rush Rhees, Whipple agreed to become a Professor and Chairman of Pathology, and the founding Dean of the yet-to-be-built medical school (URMC).

[9] Rhees was so determined to recruit Whipple, he personally flew to UC San Francisco to offer him the opportunity to build the medical school from the ground up.

[4] Whipple found this offer attractive because it would fulfil his passion to create a program which fostered an exchange between clinical and preclinical disciplines.

[8] Whipple categorically discriminated against African-American students during his time as dean, and would send a form letter to applicants rejecting their admission and requesting they apply elsewhere.

[4] Another one of his early publications described autopsy results from a patient with an accumulation of fatty acids in the walls of the small intestine and lymph nodes.

[8] When Whipple first joined Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as an assistant, he worked under William H. Welch, focusing on the repair and regeneration of liver cells.

[1][2][4] He would go on to show that foods derived from animal tissue, and cooked apricots also had a positive effect of increasing red blood cells during anemia.

[4] Based on these data, Whipple associated the iron content in these dietary factors to the potency of red blood cell regeneration.

[4] This data led directly to successful liver treatment of pernicious anemia by George R. Minot and William P. Murphy,[9] despite the main therapeutic mechanism being through B12 rather than iron.

[4] This formed the foundation of research into mammalian protein metabolism, and led Rudolf Schoenheimer to write The Dynamic State of the Body Constituents, marking the modern era of biochemistry and biology.

[4] During World War II, Whipple tested combinations of dietary amino acids, administered, orally or parenterally, and their effects on plasma protein synthesis.

[4] He was able to characterize amino acid mixtures that could satisfy the metabolic requirements necessary to maintain weight, nitrogen balance, and plasma protein and hemoglobin regeneration in the dog.

[4] This would ultimately led to human clinical trials which demonstrated that these amino acid mixtures, along with enzymatic digest of casein, could sustain nourishment in patients who could not intake nutrients through the normal gastrointestinal route for extended periods.

[4] Whipple shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934 with George R. Minot and William P. Murphy "for their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anemia".