Blumer, George, 1872-1962

George Blumer was born in Darlington, England, on March 16, 1872. His family immigrated to the United States in 1886, settling in Sierra Madre, California. He received his medical degree from Cooper Medical College in 1891. After working for some time in San Francisco, Blumer went east to work at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Between 1896 and 1903, he served as director of the Bender Laboratory in Albany, New York. To help his ailing father, Blumer returned to San Francisco and stayed there between 1903 and 1906. On April 17, 1906, he received an invitation to became professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine. The next day was the great San Francisco earthquake. Nonetheless, Blumer left for New Haven a few weeks later. Between 1910 and 1920, he served as dean at the Yale School of Medicine. During his tenure as dean, Blumer helped to bring the school out of the financial crises of the nineteenth century, and to establish it as one of the top medical schools in the country. Blumer died on May 16, 1962, in California.