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Suzanne Fortier | |
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 Fortier in May 2012 | |
| Born | November 11, 1949 Saint-Timothée, Quebec, Canada |
| Alma mater | McGill University |
| Occupation | Crystallographer |
Suzanne Fortier OC FRSC (born November 11, 1949) [1] is a Canadian crystallographer and the 17th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University.
Fortier was born in Saint-Timothée, Quebec, a town on Île-de-Salaberry in the St. Lawrence River. Her parents ran a small local hotel. She grew up speaking only French and attended a small local convent, which served as elementary school. [2] A nun who taught chemistry and was enthusiastic about the subject inspired her to pursue science. [3]
She was among the first group of girls admitted to the local CEGEP, where she and a friend decided to enter the 1968 Quebec provincial science fair. [4] Their project on the diffraction of sound waves interested a crystallographer from McGill University who was attending the science fair, and who invited Fortier and her friend to visit his lab. This visit further confirmed her interest in science generally and crystallography in particular, a field of study that she has said "present[s] you with beautiful puzzles to solve. There are incredible pictures that you get of the structure of matter." [4]
Fortier entered McGill University, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1972. She won an NRC Canada Post Graduate Scholarship and entered directly into a PhD program in crystallography. Her supervisor was Gabrielle Donnay.
During her PhD work, she attended a talk by U.S. mathematician Herbert Hauptman, who would later win the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and who studied directed methods for determining crystal structures. After being awarded her PhD in 1976, Fortier worked on biophysics for six years at the Medical Foundation of Buffalo, Inc., a private institute where Hauptman was research director (now the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute).
In 1982, she joined the Department of Chemistry of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario as an assistant professor. She was the first woman to be hired by the department.[ citation needed ] She was interested in using artificial intelligence and other mathematical and machine learning techniques to determine the structure of proteins. In 1993, she was cross-appointed to the Department of Computer Science. She later served as Queen's Vice-Principal for Research from 1995 to 2000, and then as Vice-Principal for Academics from 2000 to 2005.[ citation needed ]
She took a leave from Queen's to become the President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), a Canadian government agency that provides grants for research in the natural sciences and in engineering. She served as head of NSERC from January 16, 2006 [5] until March 4, 2013. [6]
In September 2013, Fortier was appointed the principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University.
Fortier's current salary at McGill is $390,000 with a discretionary bonus of up to twenty percent. Her contract was made public in 2013 by the university.
She was a member of the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which advised the Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau on economic policies to achieve long-term sustainable growth. The Council called for a gradual increase in permanent immigration to Canada to 450,000 people a year. [7] [8]
In 2022, Fortier announced her retirement from the role of principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University effective August 31, 2022. [9]
Fortier was awarded a total of three honorary doctorates from Thompson Rivers University, Carleton University, and the University of Glasgow. [10] In 1997, she received the Clara Benson Award for distinguished contributions to chemistry by a woman. Fortier was also honored with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada is the major federal agency responsible for funding natural sciences and engineering research in Canada. NSERC directly funds university professors and students as well as Canadian companies to perform research and training. With funding from the Government of Canada, NSERC supports the research of over 41,000 students, trainees and professors at universities and colleges in Canada with an annual budget of CA$1.1 billion in 2015. Its current director is Alejandro Adem.
John Charles Polanyi is a German-born Canadian chemist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research in chemical kinetics.
Dame Kathleen Lonsdale was an Irish crystallographer, pacifist, and prison reform activist. She proved, in 1929, that the benzene ring is flat by using X-ray diffraction methods to elucidate the structure of hexamethylbenzene. She was the first to use Fourier spectral methods while solving the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931. During her career she attained several firsts for female scientists, including being one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945, first female professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography, and first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Herbert Aaron Hauptman was an American mathematician and Nobel laureate. He pioneered and developed a mathematical method that has changed the whole field of chemistry and opened a new era in research in determination of molecular structures of crystallized materials. Today, Hauptman's direct methods, which he continued to improve and refine, are routinely used to solve complicated structures. It was the application of this mathematical method to a wide variety of chemical structures that led the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to name Hauptman and Jerome Karle recipients of the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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Shana O. Kelley is a scientist and Neena B. Schwartz Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University. She is affiliated with Northwestern's International Institute for Nanotechnology and was previously part of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Pharmacy and Faculty of Medicine. Kelley's research includes the development of new technologies for clinical diagnostics and drug delivery. In 2023, she was chosen as president of Chicago's new Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.
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Gabrielle Donnay, née Hamburger, was a German-born American crystallographer and historian of science.
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