George Walter McCoy

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

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, In 1911, he was transferred to direct the U.S. Leprosy Investigation Station in Hawaii. He was awarded the American Public Health Association's Sedgwick Memorial Medal in 1931.