He was born in
Baltimore in the United States on 12 December 1889 the son of George Washington Corner II, a local merchant, and his wife, Florence Evans. He attended Baltimore Boys Latin School. He then attended
Johns Hopkins University graduating in 1909 and obtaining a postgraduate degree in medicine in 1913. He taught as an assistant professor at the
University of California, Berkeley, 1915–19 and returned to his alma mater as assistant professor, 1919-23. In 1923 he was chosen by University President
Benjamin Rush Rhees as the first professor of medicine for the
University of Rochester, funded by
George Eastman and the
Rockefeller Foundation on a salary of $6000 per year. He took up the role in Rochester in 1924, having spent the intervening period since 1923, working in
Ernest Starling’s laboratory in England. His title here was director of the anatomy department. In 1940 he moved to the Carnegie Embryological Laboratory in Baltimore, where he worked until 1954. He was given the
Dwight H. Terry Lectureship for 1943-44 for his book
Ourselves Unborn. He served as the 27th president of the
American Association of Anatomists from 1946 to 1948. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1951 and a Fellow of the
Royal Society of London in 1955. He died at his son’s home in Huntsville, Alabama on 28 September 1981. He was a sufficiently respected citizen for his obituary to appear in the
New York Times. He is buried in
Tioga Point Cemetery in
Pennsylvania. ==Family==