Born in Alliston, Ontario, on November 14, 1891, Dr. Frederick Grant Banting would one day become known around the world as the co-discoverer of insulin—a breakthrough that transformed medicine and saved millions of lives.
Banting graduated from the University of Toronto in 1916 and soon served with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in the First World War, earning a Military Cross for bravery. When the war ended, he returned home and completed his training as an orthopedic surgeon at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.
In July 1920, he moved to London, Ontario, where he opened a medical practice and lectured on endocrinology at the University of Western Ontario. It was here, on Halloween night of that same year, that Banting stumbled upon a spark of inspiration. Reading a medical journal late into the evening, he jotted down an idea—a new method for isolating the pancreas’s internal secretion, the missing key to treating diabetes. Until then, every attempt to safely extract a usable substance for human patients had failed.
The idea seized him completely. Driven by curiosity and conviction, Banting abandoned his practice and returned to Toronto to pursue the concept. On May 17, 1921, he began research at the University of Toronto under the supervision of physiologist John Macleod, aided only by a young graduate student, Charles Best.
Throughout the summer of 1921, Banting worked with tireless intensity, experimenting on diabetic dogs. After months of struggle, he achieved something remarkable: he was able to keep the dogs alive using an extract derived from the pancreas. The preliminary results were promising enough that Macleod, Banting, Best, and chemist James Collip pushed the work forward. Their combined efforts led to the purification and mass production of insulin.
The first human to receive the life-saving treatment was 14-year-old Leonard Thompson, whose dramatic improvement heralded a new era in medicine. What began as an idea scribbled on Halloween night became one of the most significant medical breakthroughs in history.
In 1923, Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In an extraordinary gesture of fairness, Banting shared his prize money with Best, while Macleod did the same with Collip. Banting became the first Canadian Nobel laureate and an international scientific icon. The Canadian government awarded him a lifetime research grant, and in 1934 King George V knighted him as Sir Frederick Banting.
As the 1930s unfolded and the rise of Nazi Germany threatened global stability, Banting turned his attention to aviation medicine. His research contributed to the development of the first G-suit, designed to prevent pilots from blacking out under extreme acceleration.
Tragically, Banting’s life ended during the Second World War. On February 21, 1941, while traveling to England, he was aboard a Lockheed Hudson patrol bomber that crashed shortly after takeoff from Gander Airport in Newfoundland. Despite suffering mortal injuries, Banting used his final hours to treat the wounded pilot, who ultimately survived.
Banting’s legacy continues to resonate. Schools across Canada—including those in his hometown of Alliston and in London—bear his name, as does a crater on the moon. Inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 1994, he placed fourth in CBC’s 2004 Greatest Canadian poll, behind Tommy Douglas, Terry Fox, and Pierre Trudeau. In 2007, the CBC recognized insulin as the greatest Canadian invention of all time.
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