Name Edward Sellers | ||
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Died August 28, 1985, Oro-Medonte, Canada | ||
Edward Alexander Sellers (born Canada - died 28 August 1985, Medonte Township, Ontario) was the founding director of The Banting and Best Diabetes Centre. He was a naval war veteran and a prominent doctor in the fields of Pharmacology and Physiology, Military Research and Medical Research.
Biography
He was valedictorian at the University of Manitoba. At the onset of World War II, in 1939, he was called to active duty as a Surgeon Lieutenant. He served with the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) on the armed merchant cruiser, HMCS Prince Robert and the frigate HMCS Swansea during the war. He was aboard HMCS Prince Robert during the capture of the German ship Weser outside Manzanilla harbor, Mexico. Over the course of the war, he would be promoted to the rank of Surgeon Commander.
After service at sea, he joined the RCN Medical Research Division under Dr. Charles H. Best, at the Banting Institute in Toronto. Best was one of the co-discoverers of insulin. At the end of the war he was appointed as a research associate at Banting. He obtained a doctorate with Dr. Best as his supervisor in 1947. After the war, his medical career would take him away from the navy where he performed research for the Department of Defence in the field of survival under adverse conditions.
As his career developed, he held various appointments within the University of Toronto departments of Physiology and Pharmacology, and within Banting. He became Professor in Physiology at the University of Toronto in 1950. During a leave of absence from the University, he became Chief Superintendent at the Defence Research Medical laboratories 1955-1958. From 1958 to 1966 he was Professor and Head, Department of Pharmacology, and from 1965 to 1968 he was Associate Dean of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine. He was the first Chairman of Innis College Council from 1965–1967, and he served on the Governing Council of the University of Toronto from 1972 to 1974. Sellers earned himself an international research reputation mainly through his work on cold adaptation, non-shivering thermogenesis and thyroid function.
In 1978, he became the founding director of the Banting & Best Diabetes Centre. The Centre is an extra-departmental unit of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto and was named in honor of Banting and Best. Dr. Edward A. Sellers was a personal friend of Best.