top of page
ALL POSTS
Who Truly Discovered Insulin? Frederick Banting vs. Nicolae Paulescu — A Story of Science, Ego, and the Lives Saved Between Them
Insulin did not arrive as a single spark — it was a relay. A Romanian physiologist in Bucharest, Nicolae Paulescu, isolated a pancreatic extract that lowered sugar in diabetic dogs and published his findings in 1921. Months later in Toronto, Frederick Banting and his team refined a similar extract into something far more powerful — safe enough to inject into a dying boy, strong enough to pull him back from the edge.
One man revealed the hormone.
Another made it save lives.
Dec 27 min read
bottom of page