Benjamin Salomon Carson (Ben Carson) is an American neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

He was born in Detroit, Michigan on September 8th, 1951. When he was eight, his parents divorced and his mother Sonya Carson had to raise his older brother Curtis and him on her own. After graduating with honors from his high school, he attended Yale University, where he earned a degree in Psychology. From Yale, he went to the Medical School of the University of Michigan, where his interest shifted from psychiatry to neurosurgery. After Medical School, he became a neurosurgery resident at the world-famous Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. At age 32, he became the hospital's Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery. In 1987, Carson made medical history by being the first surgeon to successfully separate a pair of 7-month-old Siamese twins from Germany. They were born joined at the back of the head. In 1994, Carson and his team went to South Africa to separate the Makwaeba twins. The operation was unsuccessful, as both girls died from complications of the surgery. Carson was devastated as he knew such procedures could be successful. In 1997, Carson and his team went to Zambia in South Central Africa to separate infant boys Luka and Joseph Banda. This operation was especially difficult because the boys were joined at the tops of their heads, making this the first time a surgery of this type had been performed. After a 28-hour operation, both boys survived and neither suffered brain damage. Carson's other surgical innovations have included the first intra-uterine procedure to relieve pressure on the brain of a hydrocephalic fetal twin, and a hemispherectomy, in which an infant suffering from uncontrollable seizures has half of its brain removed. This stops the seizures, and the remaining half of the brain actually compensates for the missing hemisphere. Carson has received numerous honors and many awards over the years, including over 61 honorary doctorate degrees. On June 19, 2008, Carson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award, from President George W. Bush. He is a recipient of the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal and the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership, and was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He was also the president of the Carson Scholars Fund which he founded with his wife Candy in 1994. The foundation grants scholarships to young students of all backgrounds for exceptional academic and humanitarian accomplishments. It also promotes reading in the younger grades. In June 2002 Carson was forced to reduce his public appearances when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, but the cancer was caught in time. Carson has written four bestselling books: Gifted Hands, The Big Picture, Take the Risk, and Think Big.