Abstract
John JR Macleod (1876–1935,) an Aberdonian Scot who had emigrated to North America, shared the 1923 Nobel Prize with Frederick Banting for their discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921–22. Macleod finished his career as Regius Professor of Physiology at the University of Aberdeen from 1928 to 1935. Macleod’s posthumous reputation was deeply tarnished by the campaigns against him carried out by his fellow laureate, Banting, and by Banting’s student assistant during the insulin research, Charles Best. Banting’s denigration of Macleod was based on their almost total personality conflict; Best’s was based on a hunger for personal recognition. New research indicates how scarred both men were in their obsessions. The rehabilitation of Macleod’s reputation, begun in 1982 with my book, The Discovery of Insulin, has continued in both scholarly and popular circles. By 2012, the ninetieth anniversary of the discovery of insulin, it had become complete both at the University of Toronto and in Canada.
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