Our Trailblazers

NRC's Dr. Saran Narang was the first to synthesize and clone the gene for human pro-insulin. Until he did this, some 15 percent of diabetics couldn't take insulin because they were allergic to the therapeutic form derived from pigs.

Dr. Narang became an officer of the Order of Canada in 1985 and was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ottawa Life Sciences Council. He also received the Professor P.C. Dutta Memorial Award.

Infant meningitis can cause permanent brain damage in small children. NRC's Dr. Harry Jennings led a team that developed new vaccines to prevent different types of this terrible disease.

The vaccine represents a major scientific breakthrough, potentially saving millions of lives as it becomes available around the world.

In 1971, Dr. Gerhard Herzberg of NRC won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in identifying molecules in space. Dr. Herzberg was hailed as the father of molecular spectroscopy.

By using spectroscopy, Dr. Herzberg was able to discover some of the simplest and most important molecules in the universe and determine their structure. His work on molecular geometry served as a template for other researchers, seeking to understand how and why molecules react in a specific way with each other.

In the late 1940s Dr. John Hopps developed the first heart pacemaker. The discovery, announced in October 1950 at the annual congress of the American College of Surgeons in Boston, attracted extensive international media and research interest.

In an incredible stroke of irony, the very device that he developed would be implanted in his own chest some 30 years later to correct an erratic heartbeat.

George Klein, a Canadian inventor and a long-time NRC employee, produced an almost endless list of inventions.

He designed NRC's first wind tunnels, and invented such useful things as aircraft skis, an electric wheelchair for quadriplegics, a microsurgery staple gun, and a retractable antenna that is still standard equipment on satellites.