Ben Carson

Carson's parents were Robert Solomon Carson Jr. (1914–1992), a World War II U.S. Army veteran, and Sonya Carson (née Copeland, 1928–2017).

Both from large families in rural Georgia, Carson's parents met and married while living in rural Tennessee, when his mother was 13 and his father 28.

After Robert's completion of military service, they moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Detroit, Michigan, where they lived in a large house in the Indian Village neighborhood.

Carson's father, a Baptist minister, worked in a Cadillac automobile plant.

His older brother, Curtis, was born in 1949, when his mother was 20.

Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. (born September 18, 1951) is an American retired neurosurgeon, academic, author, and politician who served as the 17th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2017 to 2021.

In 1950, Carson's parents purchased a new 733-square foot single-family detached home on Deacon Street in the Boynton neighborhood of southwest Detroit, where Carson was born on September 18, 1951.

Carson's Detroit Public Schools education began in 1956 with kindergarten at the Fisher School and continued through first, second, and the first half of third grade, during which time he was an average student.

At the age of five, his mother learned that his father had a prior family and had not divorced his first wife.

In 1959, at the age of eight, his parents separated and he moved with his mother and brother to live for two years with his mother's Seventh-day Adventist older sister and her sister's husband in multi-family dwellings in the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston.

In Boston, Carson's mother attempted suicide, had several psychiatric hospitalizations for depression, and for the first time began working outside the home as a domestic worker, while Carson and his brother attended a two-classroom school at the Berea Seventh-day Adventist church where two teachers taught eight grades, and the vast majority of time was spent singing songs and playing games.

In 1961, at the age of 10, he moved with his mother and brother back to southwest Detroit, where they lived in a multi-family dwelling in a primarily white neighborhood, (Springwells Village), across the railroad tracks from the Delray neighborhood, while renting out their house on Deacon Street, which his mother received in a divorce settlement.

When they returned to Detroit public schools, Carson and his brother's academic performance initially lagged far behind their new classmates, having, according to Carson, "essentially lost a year of school" by attending the small Seventh-day Adventist parochial school in Boston, but they both improved when their mother limited their time watching television and required them to read and write book reports on two library books per week.

Carson attended the predominantly white Higgins Elementary School for fifth and sixth grades and the predominantly white Wilson Junior High School for seventh and the first half of eighth grade.

In 1965, at the age of 13, he moved with his mother and brother back to their house on Deacon Street.

He attended the predominantly black Hunter Junior High School for the second half of eighth grade.

Carson became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in 1984 at age 33, then the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the United States.

In 1987, he gained significant fame after leading a team of surgeons in the first known separation of conjoined twins joined at the back of the head.

Although the surgery was a success, the twins continued to experience neurological and medical complications.

His additional accomplishments include performing the first successful neurosurgical procedure on a fetus inside the womb, developing new methods to treat brain-stem tumors, and revitalizing hemispherectomy techniques for controlling seizures.

He has written over 100 neurosurgical publications.

In 2001, he was named by CNN and Time magazine as one of the nation's 20 foremost physicians and scientists and was selected by the Library of Congress as one of 89 "Living Legends" on its 200th anniversary.

In 2008, Carson was bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

He was the subject of the 2009 biographical television film Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, wherein he was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr.. Furthermore, Carson has also written or co-written six bestselling books.

In 2010, he was elected into the National Academy of Medicine.

He retired from medicine in 2013; at the time, he was professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Carson gained national fame among political conservatives after delivering a speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast that was perceived as critical of the policies of President Barack Obama.

At the age of eight, Carson dreamt of becoming a missionary doctor, but five years later he aspired to the lucrative lifestyles of psychiatrists portrayed on television, and his brother bought him a subscription to Psychology Today for his 13th birthday.

By grade 9, the family's financial situation had improved, his mother surprising neighbors by paying cash to buy a new Chrysler car, and the only government assistance they still relied on was food stamps.

Carson attended the predominantly black Southwestern High School for grades nine through twelve, graduating third in his class academically.

In high school, he played the euphonium in band and participated in forensics (public speaking), chess club, and the U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program where he reached its highest rank—cadet colonel.

Carson served as a laboratory assistant in the high school's biology, chemistry, and physics school laboratories beginning in grades 10, 11, and 12, respectively, and worked as a biology laboratory assistant at Wayne State University the summer between grades 11 and 12.

In his book Gifted Hands, Carson relates that as a youth, he had a violent temper.

Carson performed strongly in early polls, leading to his being considered a frontrunner for the nomination during the fall of 2015.

He withdrew from the race after Super Tuesday, following a string of disappointing primary results, and endorsed Donald Trump.

A pioneer in the field of neurosurgery, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 Republican primaries.

Carson is one of the most prominent Black conservatives in America.

Following widespread speculation of a presidential run, Carson officially announced his campaign for the 2016 Republican nomination for President in May 2015.

Following Trump's victory, Trump nominated Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, being confirmed by the United States Senate in a 58–41 vote on March 2, 2017.

Carson has received numerous honors for his neurosurgery work, including more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees and numerous national merit citations.