Surgeon and Co-discoverer of Insulin.

Born in a small town in central Ontario, Banting attended university with the intention of taking religious orders, but switched to medicine. He served and was wounded in France during the First World War, receiving the Canadian military cross for bravery.

Following the war, Banting began practising medicine in London ON. In 1920, he began trying to understand how the body's pancreas secretes hormones. After receiving support from the University of Toronto, he worked in the summer of 1921 with Charles Best, and, in the winter of 1921-1922, they, as well as J.B. Collip and John J.R. Macleod, made the discovery of insulin.

Insulin is a hormone that part of the pancreas secretes into the blood when glucose and other substances stimulate a need for it. By isolating it, Banting and his team determined that they could take insulin from the pancreas of cattle and pigs, and give it to humans whose pancreas would not secrete sufficient amounts of insulin on their own. Almost immediately, insulin was adopted as a successful means of combatting, though not of curing, Diabetes Melitus.

Banting and Macleod received the Nobel Prize for medicine/physiology in 1923. They were the first Canadians to receive a Nobel prize. Banting's career proved him to be a temperamental scientist with better ideas than procedures. His personal life was also turbulent. He became Sir Frederick Banting when he was knighted in 1934.

In 1941, Banting was killed in a plane crash while on a military medical mission from Canada to England. During his lifetime, Canadians considered him their most famous citizen.