Richard Pennington was a University Librarian at McGill University. He was born in Rugby, England, and received a BA from the University of Birmingham (1924) and a library diploma from the University of London (1932). He became University Library at McGill in 1947. A scholar, bibliographer, and amateur printing, he is known for the acquisition of the library's Columbian printing press and the foundation of a number of the library's humanities research collections, including the Napoleon, Hume, and Colgate Printing Collections, during his time as University Librarian. He lived in France after his retirement from McGill in 1965 and died in Montreal in 2003.
Thomas Wibird Penhallow was born on July 21, 1846, in Portsmouth, Rockingham, New Hampshire.
He was an insurance broker. He attended Annapolis College but never graduated. He went into the insurance business, and in 1910, he opened his own office in Boston, Mass., specializing in fire and marine underwriting.
He died unmarried on March 26, 1930, in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, and is buried in Portsmouth, Rockingham, New Hampshire.
Sadie Penhallow was the wife of David Pearce Penhallow, professor of botany at McGill University in the 1880s.
David Penhallow was born in Maine, and received his B.A. from Boston University in 1873. He became research assistant to William Smith Clark, President and Professor of botany and horticulture at Massachusetts Agricultural College. He followed Clark to Japan when the latter was appointed President of Sapporo Agricultural College in 1876 and taught there for four years. In 1880, Penhallow returned to the United States, where he conducted agricultural research at Houghton Farm, New York. He came to McGill as Lecturer in botany in 1883, and became Professor of botany in 1885. In 1901, he was named Macdonald Professor of Botany. An authority on palaeobotany, Penhallow wrote a Manual of North American Gymnosperms and A Review of Canadian Botany, as well as nearly two hundred scientific papers. He became senior curator of the Redpath Museum in 1908.
William Pengelly was born on January 12, 1812, in East Looe, Cornwall, England.
He was a British geologist and amateur archeologist. As the son of a sea captain, he left school at the age of 12 to join his father's crew. Returning to Looe while still in his teens, he spent his time reading widely and learning mathematics. In 1836, he moved to Torquay and opened a day school teaching according to the fashionable Pestalozzian method. In 1846, he gave up his successful school to become a private tutor and started lecturing on various scientific subjects, a career he continued for the rest of his life. He had a particular interest in caves and cave faunas and was responsible for the excavation of the Brixham Caves, Devon. In 1849, Pengelly published his first scientific paper on fossil fish found in East Cornwall. This was the first of some 120 papers on geology, paleontology, and human prehistory he would publish. His desire to educate led him to found the Torquay Young Men's Society (later the Torquay Mechanics' Institute), the Torquay Natural History Society, and in 1862, the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Literature, Science, and Art (now The Devonshire Association). He also contributed papers to the Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Geological Society.
In 1838, he married Mary Ann Mudge (1817–1851), and in 1853, he married Lydia Esther Spriggs (1819–1898). He died on March 16, 1894, in Torquay, Devon, England.
Born in Spokane, Washington, Wilder Penfield received his B.Litt. from Princeton University in 1913 and was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford (B.A.,1916). He received his M.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1918. Studying under Sir Charles Sherrington at Oxford, Penfield became interested in the brain. From 1921 to 1928, he engaged in research and neurosurgery at the Presbyterian Hospital and served on the Medical Faculty of Columbia University. Appointed to the Medical Faculty of McGill University in 1928, he was Chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery from 1934 to 1960. An endowment from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled him to establish the Montreal Neurological Institute (M.N.I.), which opened in 1934. At the M.N.I. Penfield made many innovations in neurosurgery, including a surgical treatment for epilepsy. He devoted much of his research to the study of the physiology of the brain, speech, memory and sensation. Besides his numerous scientific publications, Penfield wrote two novels and participated in a large number of professional organizations. Dr. Penfield was a member of the Board of Curators of the Osler Library.
