In 1934, William Perry Murphy, who shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine for discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anaemia, was born in Stoughton, Wisconsin. Perry shared the Nobel Prize with George Richards Minot and George Hoyt Whipple for their combined work in devising and treating macrocytic anemia.

Parry was educated at public schools in Wisconsin and Oregon, and at the University of Oregon, where he took his A.B. degree in 1914, and M.D. in 1922 from Harvard Medical School.