Banting

Banting, Frederick Grant (1891-1941) Canadian Physician Frederick Grant Banting was born on November 14, 1891, at Alliston, Ontario, Canada, to William Thompson Banting and Margaret Grant.

He went to secondary school at Alliston and then to the University of Toronto. To study divinity before changing to the study of medicine. In 1916 he took his M.B. degree and joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps. And served in France during World War.  in 1918 he was wounded at the battle of Cambrai, and the following year he was awarded the Military Cross for heroism under fire.

In 1922 he was awarded his M.D. degree and was appointed senior demonstrator in medicine at the Uni­versity of Toronto. In 1923 he was elected to the Bant­ing and Best Chair of Medical Research. Which had been endowed by the legislature of the province of ontario.

Also in 1922, while working at the University of Toronto in the laboratory of the Scottish physiologist

John James Richard macleod, and with the assistance of the Canadian physiologist Charles Best, Banting dis­covered insulin after extracting it from the pancreas. The following year he received the Nobel Prize in medicine along with Macleod. Angered that Macleod, rather than Best, had received the Nobel Prize, Banting divided his share of the award equally with Best. It was Canada’s first Nobel Prize. He was knighted in 1934. The word banting was associated with dieting for many years.

In February 1941 he was killed in an air disaster in Newfoundland.