Charles Best was the medical student who worked alongside Frederick Banting through the summer of 1921 in John Macleod's University of Toronto laboratory, isolating and testing the pancreatic extract that became insulin. Denied a share of the 1923 Nobel Prize, which honored Banting and Macleod alone, Best received half of Banting's own prize money in protest, and he went on to a career in physiology, later succeeding Macleod as head of the department.
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Source Insulin (Wikipedia)
Worked alongside Banting through 1921 to isolate and test the extract; excluded from the 1923 Nobel Prize, which Banting split with him in protest.
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of HumanityRoy Porter
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of HumanityRoy Porter
Specialist In
Source Our History (Endocrine Society)
Sources
1. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity
Roy Porter, W. W. Norton and Company, 1997
Our History (Endocrine Society)
Insulin (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationDiscoveries: Insulin, History sectionQuote, Discoveries: Insulin, History section
1922, Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and James Collip first used bovine insulin extract in humans
Essays About This Entity (1 essay)
Two Discoveries, Not One Gland, Define Endocrinology
Frequently Asked Questions
What was Charles Best known for?
He co-discovered insulin with Frederick Banting.
Charles Herbert Best was an American-Canadian medical scientist and one of the co-discoverers of insulin with Frederick Banting. He also served as chair of the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research at the University of Toronto and was involved in research concerning choline and heparin.
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