George P. Berry, M.D.
Brief Bio
George Packer Berry (1898–1986) was the twenty-sixth president of the American Association of Immunologists, serving from 1939 to 1940. He was a professor of bacteriology and dean of Harvard Medical School from 1949 to 1965.
Berry earned his M.D. at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1925 and remained at the Johns Hopkins Hospital as resident house officer (1925–1927) and assistant resident physician (1927–1929). He was an assistant (1929–1931) and an associate (1931–1932) at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research before being named associate professor of medicine and head of the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry (1932–1949). During the Second World War, Berry conducted research on the medical effects of nuclear weapons. After the war, he enjoyed a remarkable career as an administrator, serving as an associate dean at the Rochester School (1947–1949) before accepting the appointment as dean of Harvard Medical School in 1949. He modernized medical education at Harvard in 1956 by merging the medical school with seven affiliated teaching hospitals to form the Harvard Medical Center.
AAI Service History
Joined: 1934
President: 1939–1940
Councillor: 1938–1939, 1940–1947
The Journal of Immunology
Associate Editor: 1936–1942, 1943–1947
Board of Editors: 1942
Awards and Honors
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1950
Institutional/Biographical Links