Ben Carson

Ben Carson

Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. is an American politician, author, and retired neurosurgeon. He is currently serving as the 17th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Carson’s achievements include participating in the first reported separation of conjoined twins joined at the back of the head.

About Ben Carson in brief

Summary Ben CarsonBenjamin Solomon Carson Sr. is an American politician, author, and retired neurosurgeon. He is currently serving as the 17th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He was a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 Republican primaries. Carson’s achievements include participating in the first reported separation of conjoined twins joined at the back of the head. In 2001, he was named by CNN and TIME magazine as one of the nation’s 20 foremost physicians and scientists. In 2008, Carson was bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S. Carson was the subject of the 2009 TV film Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, where he was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. He has received numerous honors for his neurosurgery work, including more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees and numerous national merit citations. His parents were Robert Solomon Carson Jr. and Sonya Carson, a World War II U. S. Army veteran, and a Cadillac automobile plant laborer. His mother was 13 and his father was 28 when they married, and after his father finished his military service, they moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Detroit, where they lived in a large house in the Indian Village neighborhood. When Carson was five, his mother learned that his father had a prior family and had not divorced his first wife. In 1961, when Carson was eight, his parents separated and he moved with his mother and brother to live for two years with his older sister and her husband in the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston.

In 1983, Carson’s mother attempted suicide, and he had several psychiatric hospitalizations for depression, and the first time began working outside the home as a domestic worker. In 1989, Carson and his brother attended a two-classroom school at the Berea Seventh-day Adventist church where two teachers taught eight grades, and taught him songs and games. When he was ten, he moved back to Detroit where his mother received a divorce. In 1991, he and his mother moved to a multi-family dwelling across the railroad tracks from the Delray neighborhood, while renting out their house on Deacon Street, which his mother had received in a divorce settlement. In 1994, Carson moved back with his mom and brother back to southwest Detroit. In 1998, he graduated from high school with a B.A. in English. In 2000, he went on to earn a PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan. In 2002, he married his wife, who had been married for 20 years. In 2004, he became the youngest chief of pediatric neurosur surgery in the United states. He retired from medicine in 2013. He wrote over 100 neurosurgical publications. He also wrote a book about his experiences as a neurosurgeons. Carson is the father of a son, Ben Carson Jr., who was diagnosed with an undiagnosed form of brain cancer in 2007. Carson has been married to his second wife, June Carson, since 2008.