Frederick Banting, a Canadian scientist and a co-discover of insulin, was born on November 14, 1891 in Ontario, Canada. The youngest out of five children, Banting initially attended the University of Toronto for Divinity but quickly changed to Medicine. He was noted all through his life, though particularly while he was young, to be a great lover of dogs. This keen observation of these animals would serve him well later in life.

 After graduating from U of T in 1916 Banting joined the Canadian Army, specifically the medical corps, and served in France during the First World War. He remained there for the duration of the war and was awarded the Military Cross in 1919 for practicing his art under enemy fire.

Banting left the army at the end of the war and returned to Canada, taking up a medical practice in London, Ontario. He finished his training as an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children, located in Toronto. After finishing he started teaching at the University of Western Ontario, instructing burgeoning doctors and surgeons on orthopedic medicine. He received an M.D. degree in 1922.

By now Banting had become interested in patients with diabetes. It had recently been discovered that diabetes was primarily caused by a lack of a specific protein in the body. Dubbed insulin, this hormone presented a problem: how could one extract it from the pancreas for use in diabetes patients?

Banting had an idea how to do so. But to test it he needed facilities, funding and help. He received all three by speaking to J.J.R. Macleod, a Professor of Physiology at U of T. Macleod supplied an assistant in the form of Charles Best, still a medical student at the time, and facilities at the university. Banting and Best went to work and, with assistance from Macleod, eventually discovered insulin.

How? Part of their research involved the use of dogs. They would artificially induce diabetic tendencies in these dogs and then test experimental extracts of insulin on the dogs. Several dogs died as Banting and Best worked out their surgical procedures, and initial tests were not favorable. But by the end of the summer of 1922 the project was showing great promise as blood sugar levels in these dogs dropped off. Testing on humans yielded similar results, and within months insulin was being mass-produced for diabetes sufferers everywhere.

Their discovery would lead to later controversy, and Banting and Best would insist that Macleod’s role in the discovery was minimal.

The team split up after the discovery, for the most part. By 1922 Banting was the Senior Demonstrator in Medicine at U of T. In 1924 he married Marion Robertson, and the pair had one child, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1932. Five years later Banting remarried.

He continued to work for the Hospital for Sick Children and became interested in problems occurring in pilots while in the air, specifically blackout. Ironically enough, he would be killed in a wartime aerial disaster in 1941, his plane destroyed while on an official military mission.