Nicolae Paulescu, who discovered insulin, worked at Carol Davila University and the Nobel Prize controversy that followed, what is that story and what does it say about the school's scientific heritage?

Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy
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Paulescu’s isolation of insulin in 1921 preceded Banting and Best’s work but the Nobel was awarded to the Canadians. This thread explores that historical controversy, what it reflects about Carol Davila’s research legacy, and how the university honors or engages with that contested history today.

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OK so i actually looked into this properly last semester when we had that history of medicine elective and honestly the whole story is kind of heartbreaking. Paulescu published his paper in Archives Internationales de Physiologie in August 1921 describing pancreine, which is literally what we now call insulin. Banting and Best got their results months later in early 1922. the Nobel committee in 1923 just… did not count Paulescu’s work. some people say it was a language barrier issue since his paper was in French, others say the politics around WW1 left Romanian science pretty invisible to the western academic world. either way it is genuinely one of the biggest oversights in Nobel history.