Which Canadians discovered insulin, a treatment that has saved millions of people with diabetes?
- Alexander Graham Bell and Reginald Fessenden
- Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. John A. Hopps
- Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie
- Sir Frederick Banting and Charles Best
Answer: Sir Frederick Banting and Charles Best
Sir Frederick Banting of Toronto and Charles Best discovered insulin, a hormone used to treat diabetes. It has saved 16 million lives around the world.
Learn more: Science, discoveries and inventions
- Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis were pioneer thinkers.
- Since 1989 the Canadian Space Agency and Canadian astronauts have taken part in space exploration, often using the Canadarm.
- Nobel Prize-winning scientists include Gerhard Herzberg (a refugee from Nazi Germany), John Polanyi, Sidney Altman, Richard E. Taylor, Michael Smith and Bertram Brockhouse.
- Alexander Graham Bell came up with the idea of the telephone at his summer house in Canada.
- Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile. Sir Sandford Fleming invented the worldwide system of standard time zones.
- Matthew Evans and Henry Woodward invented the first electric light bulb and sold the patent to Thomas Edison.
- Reginald Fessenden helped invent radio and sent the world’s first wireless voice message.
- Dr. Wilder Penfield was a pioneering brain surgeon at McGill University, called “the greatest living Canadian.”
- Dr. John A. Hopps invented the first cardiac pacemaker.
- SPAR Aerospace and the National Research Council invented the Canadarm, a robotic arm used in outer space.
- Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie of Research in Motion (RIM), a wireless communications company, are known for its most famous invention, the BlackBerry.
- Sir Frederick Banting of Toronto and Charles Best discovered insulin, which treats diabetes and has saved 16 million lives worldwide.