Michael Bliss, “Sir Frederick Banting,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, last updated February 11, 2022. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-frederick-grant-banting
Research Facts
Sir Frederick Grant Banting, KBE, MC, FRS, FRSC, was one of the medical scientists credited with the discovery of insulin in 1922. He grew up in Alliston, Ontario, and attended medical school at the University of Toronto, where he graduated in 1916 (rather than 1917, when he was supposed to) because of the desperate need for more doctors to serve in the First World War. Banting was sent overseas and worked in England and France, receiving the Military Cross for valour. In 1920, he came up with the idea to isolate secretions of the pancreas in hopes of finding a cure for diabetes, and started this work at the University of Toronto in 1921, directed by J.J.R. Macleod and assisted by Charles Best. Banting and Macleod were honoured with a Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1923, which they shared with Best and James B. Collip, respectively. Banting is the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, having won at 32 years of age. Banting reportedly did not enjoy the fame and pressure that came with the discovery, but continued working in medical research. Banting died in the course of his work as a liaison with British research scientists during the Second World War when a plane he was taking from Newfoundland to England had engine trouble and crashed.