George Morris Curtis (April 2, 1890 - December 23, 1965) attended Greenville High School in Greenville, MI and graduated in 1906. He then attended the University of Michigan and received his BA and MA degrees in biology in the same year (1910) and his PhD in anatomy (1914). He was appointed to the faculty of Vanderbilt University as Assistant Professor of Anatomy in 1914 and was made Head of the Department in 1915. After serving in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in WWI, he entered medical school at Rush Medical College where he received his MD in 1920. He was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Chicago in 1927 and Professor in 1932. Later on in 1932, Curtis was appointed Professor of Surgery at the Ohio State University. In 1936, he was chosen as Chairman of the Division of Research Surgery, a position which he held until his retirement due to ill health in 1953. Curtis was one of the founders of the Central Surgical Association and in 1946 served as President of that society. His work on iodine metabolism related to the thyroid gland received world-wide recognition. He was a member of numerous national and international scientific and surgical societies. While an Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Chicago, Curtis spent a two-year sabbatical in Berne, Switzerland, where he met Lucile Atcherson (October 11, 1894 - May 9, 1986), the first woman to serve in the United States Foreign Service. They married January 16, 1928, and later had two daughters, Charlotte and Mary.