Siminovitch, Louis

• Siminovitch, Lou

Louis ‘Lou’ Siminovitch was a molecular biologist and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. In 1969, he helped found the Department of Medical Cell Biology (now Molecular Genetics), serving as its first Chair from 1969 to 1972.

He 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. He received his undergraduate and graduate education in chemistry from McGill (PhD 1944).

After spending three years with the National Research Council’s atomic energy project in Ottawa and Chalk River, he received a Royal Society Fellowship for further study at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, where he switched his interest to biology, in particular, to genetics. Dr. Siminovitch remained at the Institut Paster for six years, working with Drs. Lwoff, Monod, and Jacob, future Nobel Prize laureates. It was here that he began his pioneering studies on the regulation, structure and function of viruses that grow in bacteria, sharing in the discovery of bacteriophage lysogeny. This work contributed an essential building block in the understanding and treatment of cancer.

He returned to Canada in 1953 on a National Cancer Institute Fellowship at the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories in Toronto. 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 would remain there until 1968. During this time, he also became a staff member of the Department of Medical Biophysics. In 1969, he helped found the Department of Medical Cell Biology (now Molecular Genetics), serving as its first Chair from 1969 to 1972. He remained at the University as a Professor until 1985.

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: as Geneticist-in-Chief at the Hospital for Sick Children from 1970 to 1985; as Director of Research at the Samuel Lunenfield Research Institute at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital from 1983 to 1994; and as an advisor at the Rotman Research Institute at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.

He served on both public and private medical boards, received numerous honorary degrees, edited the scientific journals Virology and Molecular and Cellular Biology, and was a founding member of the now-defunct Canadian science journal Science Forum. 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 to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999.

In addition to his scientific achievements, Dr. Siminovitch alongside his wife Elinore, had a strong passion for the arts, in particular theatre. In honour of his late wife Elinore (1922-1995), the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre was established in 2000 to recognize excellence and innovation in Canadian Theatre.

Dr. Siminovitch passed away on April 6, 2021 in Toronto at the age of 100.

• For further biographical information, see his memoir, Reflections on a Life in Science (2003)
• Curriculum Vitae (CV). B2019-0010/029(12)
• “Elinore & Lou Simininovitch”, Siminovitch Prize website (accessed 17 Jan. 2021)
• Friesen, James D. "Louis Siminovitch". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2012. Web. 10 Apr 2012.

Updated by E. Sommers, Nov. 2021