McGill University - Notable People

Notable People

In the arts, McGill students include three Pulitzer Prize winners, Templeton Prize winner Charles Taylor, essayist and novelist John Ralston Saul, a Companion of the Order of Canada along with Charles Taylor, Juno Award winner Sam Roberts, Singer-Songwriter Prita Chhabra and William Shatner, best known for his portrayal of Captain Kirk on Star Trek and winner of several Emmy Awards. Nine Academy Award winners studied at McGill. Billboard charting musician and vocalist Mary Fahl also attended McGill University.

In the sciences, students include doctors, inventors, three astronauts and scientist Dr. Mark J. Poznansky, a member of the Order of Canada. On October 16, 2009, the 42nd American president, Bill Clinton accepted an Honorary Doctorate from McGill University.

Some politicians and government officials both within Canada and abroad are McGill alumni, including two Canadian prime ministers and eleven justices of the Supreme Court of Canada. Progressive Conservative MP Robert Layton and his son, New Democratic Party leader and Leader of the Opposition Jack Layton, also attended McGill. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga completed her Ph.D. at McGill and was elected as president of the Republic of Latvia in 1999 as the first female president in Eastern Europe after Turkey's Tansu Çiller. Ahmed Nazif also completed a Ph.D. at McGill in 1983 and has served as the youngest prime minister of Egypt since the republic's founding 1953. In the 2011 Canadian election, five McGill students—undergraduates Charmaine Borg, Matthew Dubé, Mylène Freeman (graduating shortly after the election) and Laurin Liu plus graduate student Jamie Nicholls—were elected as NDP MPs. In the United States, 2006 McGill graduate Ilya Sheyman is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Corporate leaders and media personalities have also studied at McGill. Leading Canadian philanthropist and entrepreneur Seymour Schulich donated $20 million, the highest donation to any music school in Canada, to the newly-named Schulich School of Music. Henry Mintzberg, a professor at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management is an acclaimed management thinker and contributes to The New York Times and The Economist. Mintzberg is an Officer of the Order of Canada. Co-founder and president of Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd., which innovates globally in graphics, video editing, and image processing, Lorne Trottier has donated $10 million towards services in information and technology at McGill. The new engineering building is called Trottier, named after Lorne Trottier. Conrad Black, a major media magnate and convicted fraudster, also studied at McGill.

McGill students are also recognized as athletes, including various members of Canadian national teams and twenty-eight Olympic medalists. Since the Olympics began, McGill has produced 112 Olympians who have won a total of eight gold medals, nine silver, and eleven bronze.

Jacob Viner, who would later go on to form the beginnings of the modern day Chicago School of Economics, earned his undergraduate degree from McGill. William Osler, one of the founders of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the originator of the concept of medical residency, received his medical degree from McGill.

Professors at McGill have won 26 Prix du Québec, 14 Prix de l'Association francophone pour le savoir and 21 Killam Prizes. Eleven Nobel Laureates have studied or taught at McGill.

Since 1902, Canadian undergraduate students have been eligible for Rhodes Scholarships to study at the University of Oxford. More than any other university, McGill students have won 132 Rhodes Scholarships. These students include parliamentary and cabinet ministers David Lewis (1932), Alastair Gillespie (1947), and Marcel Massé (1963), the political philosopher Charles Taylor (1952), and the U.S. political advisor and inventor Jack Phillips (1978).

• Sir John Abbott, 3rd Prime Minister of Canada.

• Sir Wilfrid Laurier, 7th Prime Minister of Canada.

• Dr. Wilder Penfield, groundbreaking neurosurgeon and inventor of the Montreal procedure.