Charles Best

Charles Herbert Best, CC, (February 27, 1899 - March 31, 1978) was a medical scientist.

He was born in West Pembroke, Maine, USA to Canadian parents.

While a 22-year-old student studying medicine at the University of Toronto, he worked as an assistant to Dr. Frederick Banting and played a vital role in the discovery of the pancreatic hormone insulin — one of the most significant advances in medicine at the time, enabling effective treatment of diabetes.

The Nobel Prize committee controversially chose to honor John Macleod for the discovery of insulin — ignoring Best. This snub so incensed Banting that he voluntarily shared half of his 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine award money with Best.

Dr. Best succeeded Macleod as professor of physiology at University of Toronto in 1929. During World War II he was influential in establishing a Canadian program for securing and using dried human blood serum. In his later years, Prof. Best would act as adviser to the medical research committee of the United Nations World Health Organization.

In 1967 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1994 he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.

Prof. Best is interred in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

See also

• Nobel Prize controversies

External link

• Charles Herbert Best, from the website of the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research at the University of Toronto