science.ca Scientists

Canadian scientists

Karel Wiesner

Biochemistry

Greatest Canadian natural products chemist

Francis Allen (Frank) Plummer

Medicine

World's premier HIV/AIDS researcher

Ray Jayawardhana

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Science

Popular writer on the origin and diversity of planetary systems and the formation of stars and brown dwarfs.

"Where do we fit in? How does our solar system stack up against others? It’s a question broader than science, and yet almost within our reach scientifically. The times we live in just happen to be the time in which I can go out and get some partial answers. The frontier is open and you can go out and play."

Major profiles

Sid Altman

Discovered catalytic RNA, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1989

Willard S. Boyle

Co-Inventor of the Charge Coupled Device for which he won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics

Bertram Neville Brockhouse

Won the Nobel Prize in 1994 for designing the Triple-Axis Neutron Spectroscope and his use of it to investigate Condensed Matter

Robert L. Carroll

Vertebrate palaeontologist who recognized and described the oldest known ancestor of all reptiles birds and mammals; the origins of terrestrial vertebrates, the origin of various amphibians such as frogs and salamanders.

Donald (H. S. M.) Coxeter

Greatest classical geometer of the 20th century

Roger Daley

Principal constructor of the Canadian numerical weather forecasting system

Henri Darmon

One of the world's leading number theorists, working on Hilbert's 12th problem.

Memory Elvin-Lewis

Ethnobotanist and Infectious Disease Microbiologist: Dr. Elvin-Lewis is an expert on evaluating traditional medicines and their use.

Biruté Galdikas

World’s foremost authority on orangutans

Gerhard Herzberg

Won the 1971 Nobel Prize in chemistry for using spectroscopy to discover the internal geometry and energy states in simple molecules, and in particular the structure and characteristics of free radicals.

Werner Israel

Physicist and cosmologist: Wrote the first logically precise theory for the simplicity of black holes (1967)

Doreen Kimura

Behavioural Psychologist World expert on sex differences in the brain. Wrote the book Sex & Cognition, which argues that there truly is a difference between male and female brains.

Charles J. Krebs

Famous for writing Ecology: The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance (now in its fifth edition), a textbook used worldwide to teach ecology, and for his work on the Fence Effect.

Julia Levy

Co-discovered photodynamic anti-cancer and ophthalmology drugs, co-founder of the company QLT Inc.

Walter Lewis

Ethnobotanist: World expert on airborne and allergenic pollen and famous for targeting medicinal plants in the tropical rain forest.

Tak Wah Mak

Discovered the T-Cell receptor, a key to the human immune system

John Charles Polanyi

Won the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry for using chemi-luminescence of molecules to explain energy relationships in chemical reactions

Hubert Reeves

World famous cosmologist and science communicator

William Ricker

Canada's Greatest Fisheries Biologist: Inventor of the Ricker Curve for describing fish population dynamics

David Schindler

Schindler identified phosphates in detergents as the pollutant killing Lake Erie in the 1960s and he pinpointed acid rain as the cause of fish deaths in the Great Lakes in the 1970s and 1980s. Schindler now warns us that over exploitation of the Alberta oil sands is ruining the Athabaska River.

Dolph Schluter

Completing Darwin's work on evolution by unlocking the mysteries of how natural selection drives the origin of new species.

Michael Smith

Won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993 for discovering site-directed mutagenesis: that is, how to make a genetic mutation precisely at any spot in a dna molecule.

Jack Szostak

Shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of telomeres.

Louis Taillefer

World expert on superconductivity

Lap-Chee Tsui

Found the gene that causes cystic fibrosis

Endel Tulving

World authority on human memory function

Irene Ayako Uchida

World-famous Down syndrome researcher