Charles Best

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Dr. Charles Best (left) and Sir Frederick Banting (right)

Dr. 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 role in the discovery of the pancreatic hormone insulin—one of the most significant advances in medicine at the time, enabling an effective treatment of diabetes.

In 1923, the Nobel Prize committee honored Banting and J.J.R. Macleod with the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of insulin, ignoring Best. This incensed Banting, who voluntarily shared half of his 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. In 2004, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. An elementary school is named after him in Burlington, Ontario and a Middleschool in Toronto, Ontario. Also a Highschool is named after him in Coquitlam, BC.

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

There is currently a High School in Vancouver, B.C., named after Charles Best called Dr. Charles Best Secondary School.

Best was married to Margaret Hooper Mahon in Toronto in 1924. They had two sons.