Douglas Harold Copp


Douglas Harold Copp, was a Canadian scientist who discovered and named the hormone calcitonin, which is used in the treatment of bone disease.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, he received his M.D. from the University of Toronto in 1939 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1943. In 1950 he became the first head of the physiology department in the newly established Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.
In 1967 he received the Gardner International Award jointly with the British endocrinologist Iain Macintyre who had sequenced calcitonin and showed it originated in the thyroid gland. He was a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Canada.

Honours