Charles Herbert Best (1899-1978)

• physiologist and Nobel laureate, who co-discovered the pancreatic hormone insulin, used in treating diabetes
• born in West Pembroke, Maine, of Canadian parents, and educated at the University of Toronto
• in 1921, while a medical student, he worked with the Canadian research physician Frederick Grant Banting in the extraction of insulin
• his work led in 1923 to the award of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine to Banting and to the Scottish physiologist John James Rickard Macleod, who had provided Banting with laboratory space.
• Banting protested the award to Macleod and shared his part of the prize equally with Best
• in 1923 the Banting-Best Department of Medical Research was established at the University of Toronto
• Best became research associate of the department and director after Banting's death in 1941
• during World War II he was influential in starting a Canadian program for the procurement and use of dried human blood serum
• in 1963 he was adviser to the medical research committee of the United Nations World Health Organization

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