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Scudder, Samuel Hubbard, 1837-1911
Samuel Hubbard Scudder was an American entomologist and palaeontologist, considered the founder of insect palaeontology. He came from a Congregationalist family with roots going back to Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans. Educated at Boston Latin School, he graduated from Williams College in 1847 at the head of his class. He later earned a second bachelor's degree studying with the famous naturalist Louis Agassiz at Harvard. A prolific author of some 791 papers between 1858 and 1902, he contributed an addendum to George Mercer Dawson's Progress Report of the Canadian Geological Survey, 1875-76, on the rare extinct fossil species of ant, Aphaenogaster longaeva; the fossil was discovered in shale that Dawson had surveyed near Quesnel, B.C. Scudder also had contacts with Dawson through his work as staff palaeontologist for the US Geological Survey (1886-1892). Other palaeontological works included Index of Fossil Insects of the World (1891), but he also authored many works on present-day insects, notably Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) including the monumental Butterflies of the Eastern United States and Canada, and some 180 papers on Orthoptera (grasshoppers), describing 630 species in 106 genera.
As well as his extensive research, he filled many roles at scientific societies of the time, including as president of the Boston Society of Natural History (1880-1887) and as librarian for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His son Gardner accompanied him on many field trips until contracting tuberculosis and dying in 1902. Scudder himself developed Parkinson's that same year, necessitating his retirement and leading to his death in 1911.
Scudder, Charles L. (Charles Locke), 1860-1949
Scriver, Walter de Mouilpied, 1895-1967
Walter de M. Scriver was born in Hemmingford, Quebec, and received his B.A. from McGill University in 1915. He served overseas from 1915-1918, returning to Montreal to earn his medical degree from McGill in 1921. He was Professor Medicine at McGill's Faculty of Medicine from 1952-1957 and physician-in-chief at the Royal Victoria Hospital. He specialized in the field of pharmacology and had a research interest in diabetes and kidney diseases. He was instrumental in founding the Quebec Division of the Canadian medical association and served as a member of its Executive Committee from 1947-1957.
Scriver, Jessie Boyd, 1894-2000
Dr. Charles R. Scriver (1930- ), is a distinguished Montreal pediatrician and geneticist. He was born in Montreal on November 7, 1930 to McGill physicians Dr. Charles Scriver and Dr. Jessie Boyd Scriver. After completing his primary education at the Lower College of Canada, Dr. Scriver earned his Bachelor of Arts cum laude (1951) and M.D.C.M. (1955) in McGill’s Faculty of Medicine, later obtaining clinical training at McGill and Harvard University (1955-58). From 1961 to 1966, Scriver was an appointed Markle Scholar within the Department of Pediatrics, a position which poised him to accept a full professorship of Pediatrics beginning in 1969. During this time, Dr. Scriver helped found the DeBelle Laboratory, a biochemical genetics lab under the Montreal Children’s Hospital Research Institute. Scriver’s work on vitamin D’s impact on newborn metabolic disorders (particularly rickets) during this period led to more stringent screening processes for phenylketonuria (PKU) and hypothyroidism in infants, and to the breakthrough introduction of vitamin D in Quebec grocery store milk. Since the 1960’s, Dr. Scriver’s academic tenure has included many visiting lectureships, six honorary degrees (D.Sc.), and culminated with his eventual post as the Alva Professor Emeritus of Human Genetics in the McGill Faculty of Medicine.
The author of over 600 publications, namesake of the Canadian Gene Cure Foundation’s Scriver MD/PhD Scholarship Program, and editor emeritus across all editions of the authoritative genetics textbook The Metabolic & Molecular Bases of Inherited Disease, Dr. Scriver has served the biogenetics community from within and beyond McGill over his 50-year career. His research interests extend from the metabolic aspects of genetic disease in infants to bioinformatics and population genetics. Scriver’s research in the scientific community is thus situated at the nexus of genetics and pediatrics.
In addition to his august academic career, Dr. Scriver has chaired and participated in a number of local and international boards and organizations in the biogenetics community, including tenures as Director of the Medical Research Council Group in Genetics (until 1994), President of the Society for Pediatric Research (1976), and the Society for Clinical Investigation. He has been accorded several civic awards, including an Officership of the Order of Canada (1985, promoted to Companion in 1995) and Grand Officier de l’ordre du Quebec (1996), and was notably inducted into the Canadian Halls of Fame for Medicine (2001) and Science and Engineering (2001). In 2010, Scriver was awarded the prestigious Pollin Prize for Pediatric Research, the largest international award for pediatric research.
Dr. Scriver met his wife Esther in 1947, with whom he has four children and seven grandchildren. They currently reside in Montreal.
Scrimger, Francis A. C. (Francis Alexander Carron), 1880-1937
Born in Montréal and educated at McGill University (B.A. 1901; M.D., C.M., 1905) Frank Scrimger served for two years at the Royal Victoria Hospital as house surgeon. In 1909 he went to Berlin and Dresden for advanced study. Upon his return he entered private practice and became an associate of Royal Victoria Hospital. During World War I, he served with the Canadian Army Medical Corps; for his bravery in evacuating sick and wounded during the second battle of Ypres, he was awarded the Victoria Cross. Scrimger returned to medical practice at R.V.H. after the War, and taught surgery in the Faculty of Medicine from 1931 to 1937. At the time of his death, Scrimger was surgeon-in-chief of Royal Victoria Hospital.