He was born on November 14, 1891, at Alliston, Ont., Canada. He was the youngest of five children of William Thompson Banting and Margaret Grant. He grew up in a deeply religious household on a farm.
Educated at the Public and High Schools at Alliston, he later went to the University of Toronto to study divinity, but soon transferred to the study of medicine.
In 1916 he took his M.B. degree and at once joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps, and served, during the First World War, in Publish Post France. There he witnessed the suffering of many wounded soldiers and gained extensive surgical experience. In 1918 he was wounded at the battle of Cambrai and in 1919 he was awarded the Military Cross for his brave conduct.
In 1919 Banting returned to Toronto, where he accepted an orthopedic surgery residency at the Hospital for Sick Children. From 1920 until 1921 he did part-time teaching in orthopedics at the University of Western Ontario at London, Canada, besides his general practice, and from 1921 until 1922 he was Lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Toronto. In 1922 he was awarded his M.D. degree, together with a gold medal.
Earlier, however, Banting had become deeply interested in diabetes. The work of Naunyn, Minkowski, Opie, Schafer, and others had indicated that diabetes was caused by lack of a protein hormone secreted by the islands of Langerhans in the pancreas.
The name insulin was given in 1916 by Edward A, Sharpey-Schafer and it was supposed that insulin controls the metabolism of sugar, so that lack of it results in the accumulation of sugar in the blood and the excretion of the excess of sugar in the urine.
Determined to investigate this possibility, Banting discussed it with various people, among whom was J.J.R. Macleod, Professor of Physiology at the University of Toronto, and Macleod gave him facilities for experimental work upon it. Dr. Charles Best, then a medical student, was appointed as Banting's assistant, and together, Banting and Best started the work which was to lead to the discovery of insulin.
During 1921, Banting and Best isolated material from the pancreases of dogs and used it to keep diabetic dogs alive. On 11 January 1922 they gave the first injections of this substance, which they named insulin to a 14 year old boy dying of diabetes almost immediately his blood sugar level fell.
In 1922 Banting had been appointed Senior Demonstrator in Medicine at the University of Toronto, and in 1923 he was elected to the Banting and Best Chair of Medical Research, which had been endowed by the Legislature of the Province of Ontario.
He was also appointed Honorary Consulting Physician to the Toronto General Hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, and the Toronto Western Hospital. Banting shared the 1923 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with his mentor at the university, John J.R Macleod.
Short Biography of Frederick G. Banting
