University of Toronto

The University of Toronto received its royal charter in 1827 from King George IV. Originally known as King’s College, it was the first institution of higher learning in the colonial Province of Upper Canada (consisting of mostly what is now southern Ontario).

King’s College was a religious institution, operating under the auspices of the Church of England. In 1850, the university was transferred to a secular administration, at which time it also assumed its present name.

Today, the university comprises 11 schools at its principal location in downtown Toronto’s Queen’s Park neighborhood, as well as two satellite campuses.

In addition, several administratively autonomous but highly prestigious research centers are housed on the University of Toronto campus. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.

Established in 1992 and named in honor of Toronto–mathematician John Charles Fields, the Fields Institute bestows its coveted award (the Fields Medal) every fourth year on several of the best mathematicians in the world under the age of 40.

Another world-famous research center located at the University of Toronto is the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS), founded by the distinguished French intellectual historian and philosopher, Étienne Gilson, in 1929. The PIMS helped to spearhead the twentieth-century revolution in our understanding of the Latin-speaking Middle Ages, the birth of the university, and the contribution of medieval philosophy to later European thought.

The university has been associated with 10 Nobel laureates and five Turing Award–winners, some of whom are listed below. Other notable University of Toronto connected people include the following:

Fine Arts and Literature

• Novelist, Margaret Atwood
• Classicist, poet, Anne Carson
• Novelist, Stephen Leacock
• Poet, soldier, field surgeon, John McCrae
• Novelist, Rohinton Mistry
• Novelist, Michael Ondaatje

Film, Photography, and Performing Arts

• Film director, David Cronenberg
• Film director, Atom Egoyan
• Film director, Arthur Hiller
• Film director, Norman Jewison
• TV screenwriter, David Shore
• Actor, Donald Sutherland

Humanities and Social Sciences

• Psychologist, Lisa Feldman Barrett
• Literary critic, Northrop Frye
• Economist, John Kenneth Galbraith
• Sociologist, Erving Goffman
• Political philosopher, Michael Ignatieff
• Economist, Harold Innis
• Communication and media studies, Marshall McLuhan
• Psychologist, Daniel Schachter
• Psychologist, Endel Tulving

Media, Law, and Public Affairs

• Political commentator, David Frum
• Social science journalist, Malcolm Gladwell
• Political commentator, Naomi Klein
• Former Prime Minister of Canada, William Mackenzie
• Former Prime Minister of Canada, Nobel laureate, Lester Pearson

STEM Disciplines

• Developer of insulin, Nobel laureate, Frederick Banting
• Thoracic surgeon, innovator in field surgery, Norman Bethune
• Mathematician, John Charles Fields
• Computer scientist, Turing Award winner, Geoffrey Hinton
• Computer scientist, Turing Award winner, William Kahan
• Biochemist, Nobel laureate, John Macleod
• Chemist, Nobel laureate, John Polanyi