When David Hunter Hubel graduated with a B.Sc. from McGill University in 1947, he decided, almost by flipping a coin, to take medicine instead of physics, his particular interest at the time. In 1981, his discoveries “concerning information processing in the visual system” led to his being one of three doctors to share that year’s Nobel prize in medicine. In doing so, he became the third Canadian-born medical doctor awarded the prize since Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist and industrialist provided funds for the award in 1901.

Nova Scotia-born Dr. Charles Brenton Huggins (1901-1997) devoted his entire career to cancer research. While at the University of Chicago, above, Dr. Huggins successfully devised a practical treatment for cancer of the prostate and of the breast. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1966. In 1958 he was admitted to the German Order “Pour le Mérite.” In 1961, the Peruvian government nominated him Gran Maestro de la Order “El Sol de Peru.” He was an honorary Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. A research laboratory was named in his honour in Italy. A much respected world figure, Dr. Huggins served as Acadia University’s Chancellor from 1972 to 1979.
 

He is seen here, left, presenting the Governor General’s Silver Medal, in 1972, to the Acadia undergraduate achieving the highest academic standing in his/her first Bachelor’s degree program. [Photo courtesy Office of Public Affairs/Acadia University]

The first Canadian to receive this award was Dr. Frederick Banting (1891-1941) who became a household name for his role in co-discovering insulin in 1921; the second was Dr. Charles B. Huggins who shared the award in 1966 for cancer research. Dr. Hubel was a professor of neurobiology at the Harvard University Medical School in 1981 when he became a co-winner with his friend and co-worker at Harvard, Dr. Torsten Wiesel, and neuroscientist Dr. Roger Sperry of the California Institute of Technology.
 
 

After learning in 1981 that he had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology, which he shared with fellow laureate, Torsten Weisel, for work on “information processing in the visual system,” Ontario-born David Hubel held a celebration conference in his classroom at Harvard University. A neurophysiologist, Dr. Hubel is one of only three Canadian-born doctors to be so honoured for their distinguished work in medical research. [Photo courtesy Marc Peloquin via Dr. David Hubel]

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Dr. Hubel, born in 1926, grew up in Montréal. Following his graduation in medicine at McGill University in 1951, he interned at the Montréal General for a year before joining the staff of the Montreal Neurological Institute for two years. In 1954 he went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and, between 1955 and 1958, served in the U.S. army at the neurophysiology division of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington where he developed a tungsten microelectrode (used to record electrical impulses on nerve cells) that enabled him to study the nerve cell activity in the brains of sleeping and waking animals.

Following his discharge, Dr. Hubel returned to Johns Hopkins where he joined the research team of Dr. Steven Kuffler specializing in the study of the microelectrical discharges of nerve cells in the retina. Hubel and Wiesel decided to investigate the receptive field in the visual cortex of the brain; this led to significant findings on how the visual nervous system functions.

When Kuffler became professor of pharmacology at Harvard in 1959, Hubel and Wiesel also joined Harvard’s Medical School where they continued their research over the next two decades that lead to their sharing the Nobel Prize. The citation given at the Nobel ceremony claimed they had unlocked “one of the most well-guarded secrets of the brain: the way by which its cells decode the message which the brain receives from the eyes.” The citation also credits them with proving how important it is for the eye to be subjected to visual experiences almost directly after birth, explaining that “if during this period one eye is sutured even for a few days, this can result in permanently impaired vision because the capacity of the brain to interpret the picture has not been normally developed.”

Besides his research, Dr. Hubel was named chairman of Harvard’s neurobiology department in 1967, a post he held for a year. In 1968, he was named the George Packer Berry professor of neurobiology at Harvard and, besides teaching, wrote a number of papers on his discoveries and lectured at universities and medical forums in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, and Israel before being named a co-winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize. Since then he has lectured in a number of other countries including Japan, where, when he was told that only ten percent of his audience would understand English, he studied Japanese and gave the talk in that language.

At age 72, he continues to teach at Harvard and pursues research on how the brain interprets colour and stereoscopic vision. “It’s much the same kind of research,” he admits, adding, “It’s still fun and I see no compelling reason to quit.”

Charles Brenton Huggins, named Chancellor of Acadia University 52 years after he graduated from it with a B.A. in 1920, shared the 1966 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for his pioneering work on cancer. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1901, where his father was a pharmacist, Huggins attended Harvard, graduating in medicine in 1924. He was a surgical intern at the University of Michigan Hospital before becoming an original faculty member of the University of Chicago’s Medical School in 1927. There he specialized in clinical urology. In 1930 he went abroad and studied at the Lister Institute in London and worked under future Nobel Laureate Otto Warburg in Germany. He became deeply interested in cancer research.

He returned to Chicago where his research led to a study of the functions of the prostate gland. He used dogs – the only known animal besides humans to develop cancer of the prostate – and discovered that the male sex hormone, testosterone, stimulated prostate growth while estrogen, the female sex hormone, inhibited it. Recognizing how this might benefit men with prostate cancer – the most common form of cancer afflicting males over age 50 – Dr. Huggins and two of his co-workers published three papers in 1941 indicating how estrogen therapy and castration inhibited the growth and spread of prostate cancer in 20 patients.

This form of treatment quickly became popular and led to the development of a pharmacological estrogen preparation in Great Britain. In the meantime, Dr. Huggins continued his research, becoming, in 1951, the founder and director of the University’s Ben May Cancer Research Laboratories. Using the motto “Discovery is Our Business,” Dr. Huggins hired a small number of creative scientists to carry on cancer research under his direction. Discoveries included showing that 30 to 40 percent of patients with advanced metastatic cancer of the breast benefitted from the removal of the adrenal gland and the surgical removal of the ovaries. He was the father of cancer chemotherapy, and for this and numerous other discoveries with respect to cancer research, he shared the 1966 Nobel Prize with another cancer research pioneer, Dr. Peyton Rous.

Many honours besides the Nobel Prize were conferred on Dr. Huggins. One was the naming of a cancer research center in his honour at Genzano, di Roma, Italy, in 1971. In 1972, he was appointed Chancellor of Acadia University, his alma mater – a post he held for the next seven years. He officially retired as Chancellor and from the University of Chicago’s Medical School in 1979 but continued cancer research until illness forced him to retire at age 91. A recipient of 15 honorary doctorate degrees, Dr. Huggins died on January 12, 1997.

Mel James