Frederick Banting—Nobel Laureate for Discovery of Insulin

Abstract

Frederick Grant Banting shared the 1923 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with fellow Canadian John James Rickard MacLeod (1876-1935) for the discovery of insulin. Banting shared his prize money with Charles Herbert Best (1899-1978), who helped extract the insulin, and MacLeod shared his prize money with James Bertram Collip (1892-1965), who helped to isolate and purify the insulin. Banting and MacLeod were the first Canadians to be awarded the Nobel Prize. The youngest of 5 children, Banting was born on November 14, 1891, on a farm near Alliston in southeastern Ontario, Canada (about 40 miles northwest of Toronto). He was educated at Alliston High School. He graduated in 1910 and entered Victoria College of the University of Toronto in 1911 to study for the ministry. After 1 year, Banting transferred to the medical school of the university. In 1915, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps but was allowed to complete his medical training at the University of Toronto, receiving the bachelor of medicine degree in 1916. During World War I (1914-1918), Banting served as a medical officer with the Canadian Army, first in England and then in France, where at Cambrai (northern France), he sustained a severe shrapnel wound to his right forearm. From 1918 to 1920, Banting was a resident surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and in 1920, he went to London, Ontario, to open a private practice of general surgery. He also became an instructor in physiology at the University of Western Ontario Medical School in London. In May 1921, Banting went to the University of Toronto to begin research on the internal secretions of the pancreas. In that same year, he began working with Best (who was then a medical student) on the pancreas in dogs. From 1921 to 1941, Banting was professor of medical research at the University of Toronto. Banting and Best tied off the pancreatic ducts of several dogs for 7 weeks. Although the pancreas became shriveled, the islets of Langerhans remained intact, and a solution was extracted from them. The injection of this extract into diabetic dogs (ie, dogs whose pancreas had been removed) quickly restored the health of the dogs. The extract was soon proved effective for the treatment of patients with diabetes mellitus. Banting and Best named the extract isletin, but MacLeod changed it to insulin, from the Latin word for “island.” The Canadian biochemist James B. Collip purified insulin from the extract. Insulin became commercially available in late 1922, the same year that Banting wrote a doctoral dissertation based on his research and received the doctor of medicine degree from the University of Toronto. In 1923, Banting became the director of the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research at the University of Toronto. In 1926, Banting was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was knighted in 1934 and was named a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1935. During World War II (1939-1945), Banting served as a major in the medical corps of the Canadian Army and also as chairman of the medical section of the National Research Council of Canada. While on a military medical mission to England, Banting was killed in an airplane crash on February 21, 1941, near Musgrave Harbour on the eastern coast of Newfoundland; he was 49 years old. Sir Frederick Grant Banting was honored on stamps issued by Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Comoro Islands, Kuwait, Transkei, and Uruguay. Switzerland honored him on a stamp (Scott No. 539) in 1971.