George Washington Corner (1889–1981) was an American physician, anatomist, endocrinologist, embryologist, historian, administrator, and author. He is best known for his contributions to reproductive science, especially his work in discovering the hormone progesterone and the development of oral contraceptives.

Corner was born on December 12, 1889, the son of Baltimore merchant George Washington Corner II and Florence Evans. He attended the Baltimore Boys Latin School and initially majored in classics at Johns Hopkins University; he maintained an interest in history and humanism throughout his lifetime.

However, Corner was also introduced to scientific subjects through his relatives, such as veterinary medicine and surgery. These formative experiences, along with an internship at the US Fisheries Laboratory, ultimately influenced his career choice. Corner earned a medical degree in 1913 and volunteered at the Grenfell Medical Mission in Battle Harbor, Labrador as a medical assistant. During one of his summers at the mission, Corner met a fellow volunteer, Betsy Lyon Copping, and they were married in1915. They had a son and daughter, for whom Corner wrote the books, Attaining Manhood and Attaining Womanhood, which were later published for young people entering puberty.

After his medical training, Corner pursued an academic path and taught from 1915 to 1919 as an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley. He also conducted research on the corpus luteum (a cellular mass created in the ovary during early pregnancy, which produces progesterone) and the hormonal basis of menstruation. Both of these topics would inform his later work in anatomy and female reproductive health. Corner returned to Johns Hopkins to teach from 1919 to1923, as well as briefly serving as the Director of the Anatomy Department in Ernest Starling's laboratory in England from 1923-1924.

The next step in Corner's career was a professorship at the University of Rochester. He was hired by George H. Whipple, a former Johns Hopkins professor who had become Dean of Rochester's new school of medicine (Whipple was the first hired, Corner was the second). The latter's position was funded by George Eastman and the Rockefeller Foundation. Corner served as professor of anatomy in the school of medicine at the University of Rochester from 1923 to 1940. After leaving, he maintained ties with the Foundation and Whipple, and later wrote books about them both.

In 1940, Corner became the third director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology, where he worked until 1955. He was awarded the Dwight H. Terry Lectureship in 1943 for his book on embryology, Ourselves Unborn. His research during this period focused on the role of hormones in the female reproductive system. He collaborated with the American gynecologist Willard Myron Allen and they were able to identify the hormone progesterone, which ultimately became a key ingredient in oral contraceptives.

Their findings led to the development of birth control pills, which usually contain some degree of synthetic progesterone and estrogen to prevent ovulation. As a result of their work together, two medical terms were named for the physicians: the Corner-Allen Test, which measures progestational activity, and the Corner-Allen Unit, which is the unit or amount of progesterone required to produce pregnancy-like changes in female rabbits.

Given Corner's contributions to science, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and National Academy of Sciences in 1940. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1951, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1955. He wrote his first autobiography, Anatomist at Large, in 1958 and served as historian of the Rockefeller Institute from 1956 to 1960. Corner also served as the Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society from 1960 to 1977.

Regarding his legacy in the field, Corner mentored a generation of up and coming sex experts, such as Alan Frank Guttmacher, an international leader in the family planning movement, and William H. Masters, founder and head of the Masters and Johnson Institute. In particular, Mary Steichen Calderone, founder and president of the Sex Information Education Council of the United States, credited Corner for allowing her to attend his classes in Rochester. In this light, he can be seen as the "grandfather" of sexual health and contraception in America, with the ability to balance a conservative 1950s view of marriage-before-sex "with tolerance and understanding gained through the study of natural human needs."

His son, George Washington Corner, IV, followed in his father's footsteps and was a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Alabama. The elder Corner was at his son's home when he died in Huntsville on September 28, 1981, shortly after completing his second autobiography, The Seven Ages of a Medical Scientist. He was thus eulogized in The New York Times:

"Dr. Corner's career embraced teaching, writing and administration as well as research in anatomy and embryology, which brought him worldwide recognition. In 1965, upon awarding him his tenth honorary degree, the University of Pennsylvania said that Dr. Corner, 'Has shown an astonishing facility in the mastering of several metiers; a renowned scientist, he is also an accomplished humanist.'"

Physical description

Circa 25,000 items (25 linear ft..

Provenance

Presented by the Corner estate and accessioned, 1981.

Processing information

Separated material

A recording of a luncheon address given by Corner, "A Medical Biologist Among Sex Experts," is available as Recording Collection 121.

• American Association for the History of Medicine
• American Association of Anatomists
• American Philosophical Society
• Carnegie Institution of Washington
• Institute for Sex Research
• International Anatomical Nomenclature Committee
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
• National Association for Retarded Children
• National Research Council (U.S.). Committee for Research in Problems of Sex
• Planned Parenthood Federation of America
• Rockefeller Institute
• Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S.
• University of Oxford
• University of Rochester
• Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology, Inc

• Drafts (preliminary versions).

• Hormones, Sex.
• Human reproduction -- Endocrine aspects.
• Medicine -- History.
• Medicine -- Research -- United States.
• Reproduction.
• Rhesus monkey.