University of Toronto - Noted People

Noted People

In addition to Havelock, Innis, Frye, Carpenter and McLuhan, former professors of the past century include Frederick Banting, Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, Robertson Davies, John Charles Fields, Leopold Infeld and C. B. Macpherson. Ten Nobel laureates studied or taught at the University of Toronto. As of 2006, University of Toronto academics accounted for 15 of 23 Canadian members in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (65%) and 20 of 72 Canadian fellows in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (28%). Among honorees from Canada between 1980 and 2006, University of Toronto faculty made up 11 of 21 Gairdner Foundation International Award recipients (52%), 44 of 101 Guggenheim Fellows (44%), 16 of 38 Royal Society fellows (42%), 10 of 28 members in the United States National Academies (36%) and 23 of 77 Sloan Research Fellows (30%).

Alumni of the University of Toronto's colleges, faculties and professional schools have assumed notable roles in a wide range of fields and specialties. In government, Governors General Vincent Massey and Adrienne Clarkson, Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King, Arthur Meighen, Lester B. Pearson and Paul Martin, and 14 Justices of the Supreme Court have all graduated from the university, while world leaders include President of Latvia Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Premier of the Republic of China Liu Chao-shiuan and President of Trinidad and Tobago Noor Hassanali. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, political scientist David Easton, historian Margaret MacMillan, philosophers David Gauthier and Ted Honderich, anthropologist Davidson Black, social activist Ellen Pence, sociologist Erving Goffman, psychologists Endel Tulving, Daniel Schacter, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, physicians Norman Bethune and Charles Best, geologists Joseph Tyrrell and John Tuzo Wilson, mathematicians Irving Kaplansky and William Kahan, physicists Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Bertram Brockhouse, architect James W. Strutt, engineer Gerald Bull, computer scientists Alfred Aho and Brian Kernighan, astronauts Roberta Bondar and Julie Payette are also some of the most well-known academic figures from the university.

In business, University of Toronto alumni include Rogers Communications' Ted Rogers, Toronto-Dominion Bank's W. Edmund Clark, Bank of Montreal's Bill Downe, Scotiabank's Peter Godsoe, Barrick Gold's Peter Munk, Research In Motion's Jim Balsillie, eBay's Jeffrey Skoll and Fiat S.p.A.'s Sergio Marchionne. In literature and media, the university has produced writers Stephen Leacock, John McCrae, Rohinton Mistry, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje, film directors Arthur Hiller, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, actor Donald Sutherland, screenwriter David Shore, television producer and writer Hart Hanson, musician Paul Shaffer, journalists Malcolm Gladwell, Naomi Klein and Barbara Amiel.