۲ݮƵ

Historical Background

A Brief Historical Background of ۲ݮƵ University,

۲ݮƵ's Faculty of Medicine, and ۲ݮƵ's Physics Department

۲ݮƵ University:

Founded in 1821, ۲ݮƵ is one of the oldest universities in Canada. The University owes its existence to James ۲ݮƵ, Montreal fur trader, merchant and civic leader, who died in 1813, bequeathing his 46-acre farmland "Burnside Place" and £10,000 for the founding of ۲ݮƵ College and the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning.

Classes began in 1829, when an existing medical college became the Faculty of Medicine of ۲ݮƵ University. The Faculty of Arts opened its doors in 1843 and over the next decade the University also added modern languages, commercial studies and the sciences. From 1855 onward, under the 38-year principalship of renowned geologist Sir William Dawson, the University began to achieve national and international prominence. Enrollment climbed from about 100 to 1000 and the University admitted its first female students in 1884. Shortly after the turn of the century philanthropist Sir William Macdonald endowed a college at Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, some 40 kilometers west of downtown Montreal, which is today the site of the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (Macdonald College).

The Faculty of Medicine:

The Faculty was established in 1829 as the first faculty of ۲ݮƵ University and the first medical faculty in Canada. It dates its origin to 1823 when four staff members of the recently opened Montreal General Hospital founded the Montreal Medical Institution in order to offer lectures to students of medicine. In 1833, four years after the institution became the Faculty of Medicine, William Leslie Logie was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine and Surgery and became the first ۲ݮƵ and the first Canadian medical graduate. In 1862 the degree was changed to its present designation, Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery, and in 1872 it was conferred upon the faculty's most illustrious graduate, William Osler. Osler served on the faculty from 1874 to 1884 before going on to the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Oxford University. He was instrumental in developing the Medical Library, which had its origin in the Montreal Medical Institution and which now contains over 216,000 volumes and 2,300 periodicals, and left to it his extensive collection of books devoted to the history of medicine.

Department of Physics:

The ۲ݮƵ Department of Physics has its originin the relatively modest Department of Natural Philosophy which, in the 19th century, was one of the ۲ݮƵ science departments. Toward the end of the 19th century, the growing importance of physics in the world of science was being recognized by a considerable increase in financial support from the ۲ݮƵ administration and by a name change from the Department of Natural Philosophy to Department of Physics. In 1890, W.C. Macdonald, a tobacco manufacturer and one of the most generous ۲ݮƵ benefactors, offered funds for the erection of a Physics building and endowment necessary for a chair in experimental physics. The chair was filled by John Cox, who in February 1896, following Rontgen’s discovery of x-rays in November 1895, published the first Canadian report on the use of the “new photography” in connection with a clinical case at the Montreal General Hospital.

While Cox’s work in imaging qualifies him as the first Canadian medical physicist, even more important developments came out of the Macdonald Physics building soon thereafter. In 1898, Rutherford was appointed professor of physics at ۲ݮƵ and, immediately upon arrival, he embarked on experiments to determine the nature of radioactivity. His work in collaboration with Soddy, who was associated with the ۲ݮƵ Chemistry department, subsequently led to the “Rutherford’s model of the atom” and other important scientific developments which affected not only the development of modern physics in general, and medical physics in particular, but also profoundly influenced the history of mankind. In 1908 Rutherford received his Novel Prize for Chemistry for his research on radioactivity carried out at ۲ݮƵ University.

With its steady growth until the 1970s ۲ݮƵ’s Physics department had become one of the major physics departments in North America with solid majors and honors programs in undergraduate physics, and a well respected graduate program, both in theoretical and experimental physics. In 1976, the department moved from the outdated Macdonald building into a new building which bears the name “Rutherford Physics building” in honor of the most illustrious physicist ever on staff at ۲ݮƵ University.

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