Lou Siminovitch Biography

Louis (Lou) Siminovitch was born in Montreal in 1920 to parents who had emigrated from eastern Europe. As a student he excelled in mathematics, and won a scholarship in chemistry to McGill University, earning a doctorate in 1944. He simultaneously studied literature and credits his English courses with the development of a love of language and writing. After a period with the National Research Council's atomic energy project in Ottawa and Chalk River, he chose to switch his studies to biology, and locale to Paris, a city selected as much for its vibrant cultural life as the academic challenge of the Pasteur Institute. Collaborating with some of the greatest biologists of the century, he began his pioneering studies on the regulation, structure and function of viruses that grow in bacteria; this work contributed an essential building block in the understanding and treatment of cancer. During this period Lou discovered the power and fascination of genetics that would guide his future career.

Returning to Canada in 1953 to join Toronto's Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, he cultivated a new interest in mammalian cell biology. By 1956 he was attracted to the team at the newly created Ontario Cancer Institute at the University of Toronto, dedicated to a multidisciplinary approach to cancer research. He then became a staff member of the Department of Medical Biophysics, serving as its first Chair from 1969 to1972. He remained at the University as a Professor from 1976 to 1985, teaching and mentoring two generations of biomedical researchers in Canada.

From this foundation, Dr. Siminovitch assumed a key leadership position as one of Canada's most renowned medical scientists and scientific builders. He played seminal roles in building research medical capacities, particularly in genetics, at important institutions; the Hospital for Sick Children from 1970 to 1985, and the Samuel Lunenfield Institute at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital from 1983 to 1994, and at the Rotman Research Institute at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, where he continues as an advisor.

During his career, Dr. Siminovitch served on both public and private medical boards, received numerous honorary degrees, edited many professional journals and was a founding member of five international journals. During his remarkable five-decade career, he published over 200 papers, reflecting his pioneering work in the fields of virology, stem cell differentiation and haemopoiesis, somatic cell and molecular genetics and cancer. His awards and achievements include a Royal Society Fellowship (England), 1991; the Izaak Walton Killam Prize, 1981; the Gairdner Foundation Wrightman Award, 1981; the Flavelle Gold Medal for the Royal Society, 1978; Officer and Companion of the Order of Canada, 1980, 1989. He was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, 1997 and named a foreign associate, and the only Canadian, to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999.