George Walter McCoy

George Walter McCoy
4th Director of the National Institutes of Health
In office November 20, 1915 – January 31, 1937
President	Woodrow Wilson Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge Herbert Hoover Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	John Fleetezelle Anderson
Succeeded by	Lewis Ryers Thompson
Personal details
Born	1876 (1876) Cumberland Valley, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	April 2, 1952(1952-04-02) (aged 75–76)
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Known for	Leprosy
Scientific career
Fields	Infectious diseases
Institutions	Public Health Service National Institute of Health Louisiana State University School of Medicine

George Walter McCoy (1876–1952) was an American physician. An international expert on leprosy, he served as director of the National Institute of Health for more than twenty years.

Early life and education

McCoy was born in 1876 in the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania. He was the son of Osborn George McCoy and his wife Lavanda Walters, and had one sibling, J. Ross McCoy, who died young in 1899. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1898 and completed his internship at City Hospital in Newark, New Jersey.

Career

McCoy in 1922

After completing his internship, McCoy joined the United States Public Health Service and was assigned to the U.S. Marine Hospital in San Francisco, California. While stationed in San Francisco, he became the director of the U.S. Plague Laboratory in 1908, and during his time there he discovered, and later isolated the pathogen responsible for, a "plague-like disease of rodents", later dubbed tularemia. In 1911, he was transferred to direct the U.S. Leprosy Investigation Station in Hawaii. In 1915, he was appointed the fourth head of the U.S. Hygienic Laboratory, which was renamed the National Institute of Health in 1930.

McCoy directed the NIH for more than twenty years, during which the agency expanded significantly. Apart from his administrative role, he continued to conduct major medical studies on a variety of diseases, and advocated a combined field and laboratory approach to public health research. He resigned his position as director in early 1937, but remained with the Public Health Service to conduct a large, nationwide survey on leprosy. In 1938, he left the PHS and joined the staff of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans, where he headed the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health until his retirement in 1948. He died on 2 April 1952.

Awards and honors

McCoy served as president of the American Association of Immunologists from 1922-3. He was made an honorary member of Delta Omega in 1930. He was awarded the American Public Health Association's Sedgwick Memorial Medal in 1931.