The Most Famous
PHYSICIANS from Canada
This page contains a list of the greatest Canadian Physicians. The pantheon dataset contains 726 Physicians, 10 of which were born in Canada. This makes Canada the birth place of the 16th most number of Physicians behind Austria, and Denmark.
Top 10
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Canadian Physicians of all time. This list of famous Canadian Physicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Canadian Physicians.
1. Frederick Banting (1891 - 1941)
With an HPI of 66.04, Frederick Banting is the most famous Canadian Physician. His biography has been translated into 72 different languages on wikipedia.
Sir Frederick Grant Banting (November 14, 1891 – February 21, 1941) was a Canadian pharmacologist, orthopedist, and field surgeon. For his co-discovery of insulin and its therapeutic potential, Banting was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with John Macleod. Banting and his student, Charles Best, isolated insulin at the University of Toronto in the lab of Scottish physiologist John Macleod. When he and Macleod received the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Banting shared the honours and award money with Best. That same year, the government of Canada granted Banting a lifetime annuity to continue his work. To this day, Frederick Banting, who received the Nobel Prize at age 32, remains the youngest Nobel laureate for Physiology/Medicine.
2. Oswald Avery (1877 - 1955)
With an HPI of 62.80, Oswald Avery is the 2nd most famous Canadian Physician. His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.
Oswald Theodore Avery Jr. (October 21, 1877 – February 20, 1955) was a Canadian-American physician and medical researcher. The major part of his career was spent at the Rockefeller Hospital in New York City. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for the experiment (published in 1944 with his co-workers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty) that isolated DNA as the material of which genes and chromosomes are made. The Nobel laureate Arne Tiselius said that Avery was the most deserving scientist not to receive the Nobel Prize for his work, though he was nominated for the award throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The lunar crater Avery was named in his honor.
3. Charles Brenton Huggins (1901 - 1997)
With an HPI of 61.23, Charles Brenton Huggins is the 3rd most famous Canadian Physician. His biography has been translated into 47 different languages.
Charles Brenton Huggins (September 22, 1901 – January 12, 1997) was a Canadian-American surgeon and physiologist known for his work on prostate function, prostate cancer, and breast cancer. Born in Halifax in 1901, Huggins moved to the United States for medical school. He was one of the founding staff members of the University of Chicago Medical School, where he remained for the duration of his professional research career. Huggins' work on how sex hormones influence prostate function ultimately led to his discovery of hormone therapies to treat prostate cancer. For this finding, he was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In addition to his work on prostate cancer, Huggins explored the relationship between hormones and breast cancer, developed an animal model for breast cancer, and developed "chromogenic substrate"s that are widely used for biochemical analyses. Huggins continued to perform research into his 90s; he died in Chicago in 1997.
4. David H. Hubel (1926 - 2013)
With an HPI of 59.09, David H. Hubel is the 4th most famous Canadian Physician. His biography has been translated into 44 different languages.
David Hunter Hubel (February 27, 1926 – September 22, 2013) was an American Canadian neurophysiologist noted for his studies of the structure and function of the visual cortex. He was co-recipient with Torsten Wiesel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared with Roger W. Sperry), for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system. For much of his career, Hubel worked as the Professor of Neurobiology at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Medical School. In 1978, Hubel and Wiesel were awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. In 1983, Hubel received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
5. Norman Bethune (1890 - 1939)
With an HPI of 57.92, Norman Bethune is the 5th most famous Canadian Physician. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.
Henry Norman Bethune (; March 4, 1890 – November 12, 1939; Chinese: 白求恩; pinyin: Bái Qiú'ēn) was a Canadian thoracic surgeon, early advocate of socialized medicine, and member of the Communist Party of Canada. Bethune came to international prominence first for his service as a frontline trauma surgeon supporting the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, and later supporting the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Bethune helped bring modern medicine to rural China, treating both sick villagers and wounded soldiers. Bethune was responsible for developing a mobile blood-transfusion service for frontline operations in the Spanish Civil War. He later died of blood poisoning after accidentally cutting his finger while operating on wounded Chinese soldiers. Bethune's service to the CCP earned him the respect of Mao Zedong, who wrote a eulogy dedicated to Bethune when he died in 1939. His name is honored in China to this day.
6. William Osler (1849 - 1919)
With an HPI of 55.52, William Osler is the 6th most famous Canadian Physician. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.
Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet, (; July 12, 1849 – December 29, 1919) was a Canadian physician and one of the "Big Four" founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Osler created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians, and he was the first to bring medical students out of the lecture hall for bedside clinical training. He has frequently been described as the Father of Modern Medicine and one of the "greatest diagnosticians ever to wield a stethoscope". In addition to being a physician he was a bibliophile, historian, author, and renowned practical joker. He was passionate about medical libraries and medical history, having founded the History of Medicine Society (formally "section"), at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. He was also instrumental in founding the Medical Library Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and the (North American) Association of Medical Librarians (later the Medical Library Association) along with three other people, including Margaret Charlton, the medical librarian of his alma mater, McGill University. He left his own large history of medicine library to McGill, where it became the Osler Library.
7. Frances Oldham Kelsey (1914 - 2015)
With an HPI of 51.45, Frances Oldham Kelsey is the 7th most famous Canadian Physician. Her biography has been translated into 32 different languages.
Frances Kathleen Oldham Kelsey (née Oldham; July 24, 1914 – August 7, 2015) was a Canadian-American pharmacologist and physician. As a reviewer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), she refused to authorize thalidomide for market because she had concerns about the lack of evidence regarding the drug's safety. Her concerns proved to be justified when it was shown that thalidomide caused serious birth defects. Kelsey's career intersected with the passage of laws strengthening FDA oversight of pharmaceuticals. Kelsey was the second woman to receive the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, awarded to her by John F. Kennedy in 1962. Born in Cobble Hill, British Columbia, Kelsey attended St. Margaret's School from 1928 to 1931 in the provincial capital, graduating at age 15. From 1930 to 1931, she attended Victoria College (now University of Victoria). She then enrolled at McGill University, where she received both a B.Sc. (1934) and an M.Sc. (1935) in pharmacology. Encouraged by one of her professors, she "wrote to EMK Geiling, M.D., a noted researcher [who] was starting up a new pharmacology department at the University of Chicago, asking for a position doing graduate work". Geiling, unaware of spelling conventions with respect to Francis and Frances, presumed that Frances was a man and offered her the position, which she accepted, starting work in 1936. During Kelsey's second year, Geiling was retained by the FDA to research unusual deaths related to elixir sulfanilamide, a sulfonamide medicine. Kelsey assisted on this research project, which showed that the 107 deaths were caused by the use of diethylene glycol as a solvent. At that time, there was no law available to prosecute those who sold poison as medicine, and Kelsey observed the need to work around incomplete regulation. The next year, the United States Congress passed the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. That same year she completed her studies and received a Ph.D. in pharmacology at the University of Chicago. Working with Geiling led to her interest in teratogens, drugs that cause congenital malformations (birth defects). She learned about the mechanism by which birth defects occur. Upon completing her Ph.D., Oldham joined the University of Chicago faculty. In 1942, like many other pharmacologists, Oldham was looking for a synthetic cure for malaria. As a result of these studies, Oldham learned that some drugs are able to pass through the placental barrier. During her work, she also met fellow faculty member Fremont Ellis Kelsey, whom she married in 1943. While on the faculty at the University of Chicago, Kelsey was awarded her M.D. in 1950. She supplemented her teaching with work as an editorial associate for the American Medical Association Journal for two years. Kelsey left the University of Chicago in 1954, decided to take a position teaching pharmacology at the University of South Dakota, and moved with her husband and two daughters to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she taught until 1957. She became a dual citizen of Canada and the United States in the 1950s in order to continue practicing medicine in the U.S., but retained strong ties to Canada where she continued to visit her siblings regularly until late in life. In 1960, Kelsey was hired by the FDA in Washington, D.C. At that time, she "was one of only seven full-time and four young part-time physicians reviewing drugs" for the FDA. One of her first assignments at the FDA was to review an application by Richardson-Merrell for the drug thalidomide (under the tradename Kevadon) as a tranquilizer and painkiller with specific indications to prescribe the drug to pregnant women for morning sickness. Although it had been previously approved in Canada and more than 20 European and African countries, she withheld approval for the drug and requested to see clinical trial information. At the time, the FDA could only withhold approval for 60 days at a time, so she continually requested further information from the company every 60 days for over a year. Her initial reason for doing this was that the testimonials supplied by Richardson-Merrell contained no scientific methodology, and she recognized their authors as having published suspicious articles in the past. In December 1960, Leslie Florence published a letter in the British Medical Journal connecting thalidomide to neurological symptoms. Kelsey saw this letter and added Florence's observed symptoms to her ongoing data requests. The unexpected neurological effects caused her to recall her earlier work on the mechanism of birth defects, so she also requested animal studies to demonstrate that the drug would not be harmful to the fetus. In fact, Richardson-Merrell had reportedly discovered birth defects when the drug was tested on rats but did not report this finding; Kelsey was instead sent misleading partial data suggesting the product was safe for pregnant women. Despite the fact that thalidomide was already widely used in Europe and elsewhere, Kelsey remained suspicious and scrutinized this data with concern and skepticism, sometimes asking her husband to check her conclusions. As 1960 turned to 1961, Kelsey's continual requests for more information incurred the ire of her contact at Richardson-Merrell, who insisted on speeding up the approval process and attempted to escalate the application, but Kelsey's superiors at the FDA stood by her. Kelsey's insistence that the drug should be fully tested prior to approval was vindicated in November 1961 when the births of deformed infants in Europe were linked to thalidomide ingestion by their mothers during pregnancy. Researchers discovered that the thalidomide crossed the placental barrier and caused serious birth defects. In March 1962, after distributing "experimental" tablets to tens of thousands of patients without approval (causing 17 malformed births), Richardson-Merrell at last withdrew their FDA application. Kelsey was hailed on the front page of The Washington Post as a heroine for averting a large-scale tragedy in the U.S. Morton Mintz, author of The Washington Post article, said "[Kelsey] prevented ... the birth of hundreds or indeed thousands of armless and legless children." Kelsey insisted that her assistants, Oyama Jiro and Lee Geismar, as well as her FDA superiors who backed her strong stance, deserved credit as well. The narrative of Kelsey's persistence was used to help pass rigorous drug approval regulation in 1962. After Mintz broke the story in July 1962, there was a substantial public outcry. The Kefauver Harris Amendment was passed unanimously by Congress in October 1962 to strengthen drug regulation. Companies were required to demonstrate the efficacy of new drugs, report adverse reactions to the FDA, and request consent from patients participating in clinical studies. The drug testing reforms required "stricter limits on the testing and distribution of new drugs" to avoid similar problems. The amendments, for the first time, also recognized that "effectiveness [should be] required to be established prior to marketing." As a result of her blocking American approval of thalidomide, Kelsey was awarded the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by John F. Kennedy on August 7, 1962, becoming the second woman so honoured. After receiving the award, Kelsey continued her work at the FDA. There, she played a key role in shaping and enforcing the 1962 amendments. She was named Director of the Investigational Drug Branch. In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson appointed James L. Goddard as Commissioner of Food and Drugs. Goddard resented the public attention Kelsey continued to receive and believed widespread rumors spread by pharmaceutical industry executives that Kelsey had delayed the thalidomide application through pure laziness. This was precisely the opposite of the truth: most applications were automatically approved by reviewers ignoring the 60 day deadline, while Kelsey had carefully sent out data requests for over a year. Regardless, Kelsey was demoted from Director of the Investigational Drug Branch to Chief of the Division of Oncology and Radiopharmaceutical Drug Products, where she was given little work. After Goddard's departure, Kelsey was again appointed Director of Scientific Investigations, and continued in this position for many decades. She was involved in the contentious regulation of diethylstilbestrol, which also caused birth defects, and dimethyl sulfoxide. She was still working at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research in 1995 and was appointed deputy for scientific and medical affairs. In 1994, the Frances Kelsey Secondary School in Mill Bay, British Columbia, was named in her honour. She attended the opening ceremony despite having suffered broken ribs and a vertebral compression fracture on the way to the ceremony. In 1995, when she was eighty-one, the FDA created a special position for her, Deputy for Scientific and Medical Affairs in the Office of Compliance. Kelsey retired from the FDA in 2005, at age 90, after 45 years of service. In 2010, the FDA presented Kelsey with the first Drug Safety Excellence Award and named the annual award after her, announcing that it would be given to one FDA staff member annually. In announcing the awards, Center Director Steven K. Galson said: "I am very pleased to have established the Dr. Frances O. Kelsey Drug Safety Excellence Award and to recognize the first recipients for their outstanding accomplishments in this important aspect of drug regulation." Kelsey turned 100 in July 2014, and shortly thereafter, in the fall of 2014, she moved from Washington, D.C., to live with her daughter in London, Ontario. In June 2015, when she was named to the Order of Canada, Mercédes Benegbi, a thalidomide victim and the head of the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada, praised Kelsey for showing strength and courage by refusing to bend to pressure from drug company officials, and said "To us, she was always our heroine, even if what she did was in another country." Kelsey died in London, Ontario, on August 7, 2015, at the age of 101, less than 24 hours after Ontario's Lieutenant-Governor, Elizabeth Dowdeswell, visited her home to present her with the insignia of Member of the Order of Canada for her role against thalidomide. 1962 • President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service 1963 • Gold Key Award from University of Chicago, Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Association 1994 • Chosen as the namesake for Frances Kelsey Secondary School which opened in 1995. 2000 • Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame 2001 • Named a Virtual Mentor for the American Medical Association 2006 • Foremother Award from the National Center for Health Research 2010 • Recipient of the first Dr. Frances O. Kelsey Award for Excellence and Courage in Protecting Public Health given out by the FDA 2012 • Honorary doctor of science degree from Vancouver Island University 2015 • Named to the Order of Canada Essinger, James; Koutzenko, Sandra (2018). Frankie: how one woman prevented a pharmaceutical disaster. North Palm Beach, Florida: Blue Sparrow Books. ISBN 1635820464. Warsh, Cheryl Krasnick (2024). Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA, and the battle against thalidomide. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0197632548. European Medicines Agency Bren, Linda (March–April 2001), "Frances Oldham Kelsey: FDA Medical Reviewer Leaves Her Mark on History", FDA Consumer, 35 (2): 24–29, PMID 11444245, archived from the original on October 20, 2006, retrieved August 15, 2009 Harris, Gardiner (September 13, 2010), "The Public's Quiet Savior From Harmful Medicines", The New York Times. Kelsey, Frances O. (1993), Autobiographical Reflections (PDF). This was drawn from oral history interviews conducted in 1974, 1991, and 1992; presentation, Founder's Day, St. Margaret's School, Duncan, B. C., 1987; and presentation, groundbreaking, Frances Kelsey School, Mill Bay, B. C., 1993. McGovern, James (2020), "Quieter Things: The Tale of Frances Oldham Kelsey", Boulevard, 35 (2 & 3): 209–219. Mintz, Morton (1965), The therapeutic nightmare; a report on the roles of the United States Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and others in connection with the irrational and massive use of prescription drugs that may be worthless, injurious, or even lethal., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, LCCN 65015156. Library of Congress catalog entry. McFadyen, R. E. (1976), "Thalidomide in America: A Brush With Tragedy", Clio Medica, 11 (2): 79–93, PMID 61093. Mulliken, J. (August 10, 1962), "A Woman Doctor Who Would Not be Hurried", Life, vol. 53, pp. 28–9, LCCN 37008367. Perri III, Anthony J.; Hsu MD, Sylvia (2003), "A review of thalidomide's history and current dermatological applications", Dermatology Online Journal, 9 (3): 5, doi:10.5070/D35FK5W0QV, PMID 12952752, retrieved August 14, 2006. Seidman, Lisa A.; Warren, Noreen (September 2002), "Frances Kelsey & Thalidomide in the US: A Case Study Relating to Pharmaceutical Regulations" (PDF), The American Biology Teacher, 64 (7): 495, doi:10.1662/0002-7685(2002)064[0495:FKTITU]2.0.CO;2, 7. Stamato, Linda (December 17, 2012), "Thalidomide, after fifty years: A tribute to Frances Oldham Kelsey and a call for thorough, responsible federal drug regulation and oversight", NJ Voices.
8. Édouard Gagnon (1918 - 2007)
With an HPI of 49.81, Édouard Gagnon is the 8th most famous Canadian Physician. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Édouard Gagnon, PSS, OC (15 January 1918 – 25 August 2007) was a Canadian Roman Catholic cardinal and President of the Pontifical Council for the Family for 16 years, from 1974 to 1990. He became a cardinal on 25 May 1985.
9. Lucille Teasdale-Corti (1929 - 1996)
With an HPI of 44.96, Lucille Teasdale-Corti is the 9th most famous Canadian Physician. Her biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Lucille Teasdale-Corti (January 30, 1929 – August 1, 1996) was a Canadian physician and pediatric surgeon, who worked in Uganda from 1961 until her death in 1996. Despite considerable hardship, including civil war and the AIDS epidemic, she cofounded with her husband a university hospital in the north of Uganda.
10. Maude Abbott (1868 - 1940)
With an HPI of 40.31, Maude Abbott is the 10th most famous Canadian Physician. Her biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott (March 18, 1868 – September 2, 1940) was a Canadian physician, among Canada's earliest female medical graduates, and an internationally known expert on congenital heart disease. She was one of the first women to obtain a BA from McGill University.
People
Pantheon has 12 people classified as Canadian physicians born between 1849 and 1989. Of these 12, 2 (16.67%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Canadian physicians include James Heilman, and Alaa Murabit. The most famous deceased Canadian physicians include Frederick Banting, Oswald Avery, and Charles Brenton Huggins. As of April 2024, 2 new Canadian physicians have been added to Pantheon including Maude Abbott, and Alaa Murabit.
Living Canadian Physicians
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Deceased Canadian Physicians
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Frederick Banting
1891 - 1941
HPI: 66.04
Oswald Avery
1877 - 1955
HPI: 62.80
Charles Brenton Huggins
1901 - 1997
HPI: 61.23
David H. Hubel
1926 - 2013
HPI: 59.09
Norman Bethune
1890 - 1939
HPI: 57.92
William Osler
1849 - 1919
HPI: 55.52
Frances Oldham Kelsey
1914 - 2015
HPI: 51.45
Édouard Gagnon
1918 - 2007
HPI: 49.81
Lucille Teasdale-Corti
1929 - 1996
HPI: 44.96
Maude Abbott
1868 - 1940
HPI: 40.31
Newly Added Canadian Physicians (2024)
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Which Physicians were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 10 most globally memorable Physicians since 1700.
