George Hoyt Whipple (August 28, 1878 – February 1, 1976) was an American physician, pathologist, biomedical researcher, and medical school educator and administrator. Whipple shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934 with George Richards Minot and William Parry Murphy "for their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anemia". This makes Whipple the first of several Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of Rochester.

Whipple was born to Ashley Cooper Whipple and Frances Anna Hoyt in Ashland, New Hampshire. Ashley Cooper Whipple was a physician, and his father (George's paternal grandfather) was a physician and President of the New Hampshire Medical Society. Whipple's father died from pneumonia or typhoid fever when George was just shy of two years old. His maternal grandfather also died when Whipple was two years old, and his paternal grandfather died a year later. This left Whipple to be raised by his mother, Frances, and grandmother, Frances Moody Hoyt, who impressed on him the value of hard work and education.

Whipple attended Andover prep school and began attending Yale University as an undergraduate in 1896, earning A.B. degree in 1900. During these years, he developed as an outdoorsman, an affinity he would hold lifelong. He wrote in his autobiography about growing up in a lake district, "I feel very fortunate that I grew up in the country...I became interested in wild life and camping, also hiking, snowshoeing, skating, bob sledding, canoeing, fishing, hunting—all this was an essential part of my life". He even credited his love for the outdoors as a contributor to his successes in work, study, and teaching. In the summers of prep school and undergrad, he worked at a drugstore and at Squam Lake and Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire providing help and ferry services to the tourists and campers. Of his summer experiences, Whipple said, "I sometimes think I learned as much during the summer work periods as during the school terms."

As an undergraduate, he became a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, and proved to be a prize-winning gymnast, oarsman, and an outstanding science student. His excellence in science was exemplified by his election to Sigma Xi honor society and graduation with senior honors. The interactions Whipple had with biochemists Russell Henry Chittenden and Lafayette Mendel during his senior year at Yale left an indelible mark on his life and career. In his autobiography, Whipple describes Mendel as "an unusual man who exerted a strong influence on me ... work with him was exciting and never to be forgotten".

With a shortage of funds to finance further education, Whipple took a year off after graduating Yale. During this year, he worked at Dr. Holbrook Military School in Ossining, New York, teaching mathematics and science, and serving as an athletic coach.

In 1901, under the advice, persuasion, and guidance of his mother, Whipple attended medical school at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He received his M.D. degree in 1905. To gain experience and subsidize his medical school studies, Whipple applied for and was accepted to a teaching assistantship in John J. Abel's Department of Physiological Chemistry. Later, his performance in his first year anatomy course earned him a second-year appointment as a student instructor in anatomy. During this time, his interest in histology developed. Under the mentorship of William Welch, Eugene Opie, and William McCallum, Whipple was inspired to correlate clinical illness and disease, to the tissue findings discovered on autopsy. Together, McCallum and Welch conspired to offer Whipple a position as junior member of the pathology department with the hope it would lead to Whipple become a pediatric pathologist. Ultimately, Whipple accepted the position which shaped his career aspirations to become a pathologist.

In 1905, Whipple joined the pathology department at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as an assistant in pathology. He was promoted successively to Assistant, Instructor, Associate and associate professor in pathology until he left in 1914. During this time, he spent a year in Panama at Ancon Hospital as a pathologist. In Panama, he worked with Samuel Darling, a resident pathologist, and General Gorgas to gain experience in tropical diseases. This experience afforded him the opportunity to study massive hemolysis associated with blackwater fever. Before returning to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine after his time in Panama, Whipple traveled to Europe and spent time in the laboratories of Krehl and Morawitz in Heidelberg, where he learned about anemia in rabbits. In 1911, Whipple went to Vienna to study hepatic portal vein blood flow and its effects on hepatic functions in the dog with Hans Meyer.

In 1914, at 34 years old, Whipple married Katherine Ball Waring of Charleston, South Carolina. They had two children. He was also appointed Professor of Research Medicine, and Director of the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research at the University of California San Francisco medical school. He was dean of that medical school in 1920 and 1921.