Ben Carson

He met Lacena “Candy” Rustin in 1971 when both were students at Yale University. They got married in 1975 and were blessed with three sons. Carson was diagnosed with prostrate cancer during the early 2000s and is completely recovered by now.

Along with his wife he started the Carson Scholars Fund in 1994 to give scholarships to school students for “academic excellence and humanitarian qualities.”

He was born as the second son of Sonya Copeland and Robert Solomon Carson, a Baptist Minister, in Michigan. His mother had dropped out of school to get married when she was just 13. His parents divorced when Ben was eight leaving his young mother to fend for herself and her two sons.

The family struggled as Sonya juggled two to three jobs at a time in order to make ends meet. Growing up in poverty, Ben had no interest in studies and was becoming violent. His mother adopted a stricter routine for her sons and made them study harder.

Under his mother’s guidance Ben began to take studies seriously and soon became a class topper. He graduated from Southwestern High School with honors and went to Yale University where he majored in psychology in 1973.

Determined to become a physician he went to the Medical School of the University of Michigan. Here he realized his interest in neurosurgery and specialized in this field, receiving his M.D. from the University.

Following his graduation from medical school he became a neurosurgery resident at the renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1977. From early on he display great eye-hand coordination and proved himself to be a very good surgeon.

He was invited to join the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Australia, in 1983, as Australia at that time did not have enough neurosurgeons with expertise in the field. Though initially reluctant to move so far away from home, Carson accepted the opportunity.

He returned to Johns Hopkins in 1984 and was appointed the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1985 when he was just 33; he also served as a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Craniofacial Center.

He created history in 1987 when he led a team of doctors in a complicated surgery to separate two 7-month-old craniopagus twins. He was consulted for this case from Germany—such was his reputation! He lived up to his image as his team successfully separated the boys.

He was invited to South Africa in 1994 to separate another pair of conjoined twins, the Makwaeba twins. However the surgery was not successful in spite of the surgeons’ best efforts and both the babies died.

On 4 September, 1987 he became the first neurosurgeon to successfully separate a set of conjoined twins joined at the head. Along with a team of 70 doctors and other medical staff, he led the 22-hour surgery to separate the conjoined twin boys. This was the first surgery of its kind in the world where both the babies survived.