Uncommon · People
William P. Murphy
American scientist (1892–1987)
William Parry Murphy Sr. (February 6, 1892 – October 9, 1987) was an American physician who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934 with George Richards Minot and George Hoyt Whipple for their combined work in devising and treating macrocytic anemia (specifically, pernicious anemia).
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Murphy was born on February 6, 1892, at Stoughton, Wisconsin and moved to Condon, Oregon as a youth. His father, Thomas Francis Murphy, was a congregational minister of English and Irish heritage. His mother, Rosa Anna Parry, was of a Welsh landowning background. Murphy was educated at the public schools of Wisconsin and Oregon. He completed his A.B. degree in 1914 from the University of Oregon. He completed his M.D. in 1922 from Harvard Medical School. Murphy's later work in pernicious anemia would build on that of Whipple. In 1924, Whipple bled dogs to make them anemic (work inspired by war injury work), and then fed them various substances to gauge their improvement. He discovered that ingesting large amounts of liver seemed to restore anemia more quickly of all foods.
Text: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0. · Image: The Nobel Foundation (Public domain) ·