Dr. Ben Carson has gone from pioneering neurosurgeon to potential presidential Republican candidate in 2016.
Here are seven highlights the GOP hopeful's life pre-politics:
1. Dr. Ben Carson was born in 1951 in Detroit to parents who had moved north looking for opportunities in the auto industry. However, the family broke up and his mother moved the children to Boston when she discovered his father had another family.
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2. Carson, who struggled in school in his youth, credits his mother, Sonya Carson, with making him turn around academically. She limited TV time and made her children read books from the Detroit Public Library, write reports on them and read the reports to her – although she, herself, could not read. "She wanted something better for us,"
he told The Root.
3. Carson went from being a struggling high-school student to Yale, then to the University of Michigan Medical School, then on to a residency at Johns Hopkins. Now he’s considered one of the leading pediatric neurosurgeons in the world.
4. Carson was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in 1984, when he became the youngest ever appointed to this academic level at Johns Hopkins.
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5. Carson took part in the surgical separation of five sets of twins joined at the head, including pairs operated on in 1987, 1994, 1997, 2004, and in the separation of adult conjoined twins, Laleh and Ladan Bijani, in 2003,
according to the Hopkins Children’s Center website.
6. Carson was the first recipient of a Johns Hopkins professorship named for him and for registered nurse and honorary Ph.D. Evelyn Spiro, who with her husband Donald, were the main donors of the professorship. The Benjamin S. Carson Sr., M.D., and Dr. Evelyn Spiro, R.N., Professorship in Pediatric Neurosurgery was awarded May 29, 2008,
the hospital website said.
7. He retired in 2013 as director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, and at the time, he alluded to White House aspirations,
The Washington Post reported.
“I want to quit while I'm at the top of my game, and there are so many more things that could be done," the Post quoted Carson, who also said during a different part of his talk, “Let’s say you magically put me in the White House.” He got a standing ovation.
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