Nicolae Constantin Paulescu was a Romanian physiologist and politician and the first to publish on the discovery of insulin, which he had called pancreine. While waiting for approval of his patents in 1922, Frederick Banting and Charles Best also isolated insulin overseas and administered it for the first time into a human patient to successfully treat diabetes. Banting and Best were awarded the Nobel Prize the following year, while Paulescu’s claims of being the first to discover insulin were rejected.
Paulescu was born in Bucharest on November 8, 1860 to a merchant named Costache Paulescu and his wife, Maria. He was the eldest of four children. At an early age, he learned French, Latin, and ancient Greek and became fluent in all three languages. He had a natural gift for the sciences, particularly physics and chemistry. In 1888, he graduated from high school and moved to Paris for medical school. He received his medical degree in 1897. He then worked at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris hospital with French physician Étienne Lancereaux, who suggested that diabetes originated in the pancreas, and French scientist Albert Dastre, who studied the pancreas and digestion. By 1899, Paulescu had earned two doctorates, one in physiology and the other in the natural sciences. He returned to Romania in 1990 to work as a faculty member at the University of Bucharest, where he stayed until his death in 1931.
Paulescu’s early research focused on the cause of diabetes and the role of the pancreas. By 1916, he had extracted pancreine and found that it normalized blood sugar levels when injected into diabetic dogs. His research was put on hold when he was called to service in the Romanian army during World War I. When he returned in 1921, he published his work in four research papers. This was the same year that Banting and his team also injected insulin into diabetic dogs and found that it normalized blood sugar levels. While Paulescu’s extract had toxic side effects in dogs, the Canadian team - with the help of James Collip - successfully purified insulin for safe and effective use in humans, ultimately winning them the Nobel Prize.
Forty years after his death, Ian Murray, a British Professor and a founding member of the International Diabetes Federation, advocated for Paulescu’s acknowledgement through a series of publications. In his 1971 piece in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences titled Paulescu and the isolation of insulin, Murray argued that “insufficient recognition has been given to Paulescu,” who had successfully demonstrated the efficacy of insulin before the Toronto team. Murray was eventually successful in gaining scientific recognition for Paulescu’s contribution in the history of insulin. In 1993, the Institute of Diabetes, Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases in Bucharest was named in Paulescu’s honour.
Outside of science, Paulescu was an active politician infamous for his public anti-Semitism. He founded the National Christian Union, a far-right political party in Romania. In 2003, Paulescu’s bust was set to be inaugurated at the Hôtel-Dieu. This ceremony, however, was protested and eventually cancelled due to his anti-Semitic activities. Despite his contributions to insulin, Paulescu will be remembered as a deeply flawed and much criticized figure in science.
— Written by Stephanie Tran