University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia (UBC) was founded in 1908.

For the first several decades of its existence, the university’s activities were modest in scope. In 1925 a bold program to transform UBC into a modern research university was put into effect. At this time the main campus was transferred from the Fairview neighborhood just south of downtown Vancouver, to a larger campus at Point Grey about six miles to the west.

Today, UBC is the third-largest university in Canada. In addition to the main campus there is a satellite campus in the city of Kelowna. In all, the UBC student body tops 66,000 souls.

UBC is home to Canada’s national high-energy physics laboratory (TRIUMF), which houses a 520-million electron-volt, cyclotron-style, particle accelerator—the world’s largest. Other cutting-edge UBC scientific facilities include the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and the Stuart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute.

UBC is connected with eight Nobel laureates, namely:

• Physicists, Bertram Brockhouse, Carl Wieman & Hans Dehmelt
• Chemist. Michael Smith
• Economists, Robert Mundell, Daniel Kahneman & Richard Thaler
• Short-story writer, Alice Munro

Other prominent UBC associated individuals include the following:

• Mathematicians, Robert Langlands, Peter Borwein & Nassif A. Ghoussoub
• Computer scientists, Charlotte Froese Fischer, Arvind Gupta & Anne Condon
• Physicists, Carl Wieman & George Volkoff
• Electrical engineer, Vijay Bhargava
• Anti-cancer drug inventor, Patrick Soon-Shiong
• Epidemiologist, Martin Schechter
• Geneticist, David Suzuki
• Evolutionary biologist, Patrick J. Keeling
• Geoscientist, William Richard Peltier
• Psychologist, Albert Bandura
• Ecological economist, C.S. Holling
• Historian, L.S. Stavrianos
• Essayist, historian, and TV personality, Pierre Berton
• Poet, Fred Wah
• Novelist, Steven Galloway
• Science fiction writer, William Gibson
• Operatic tenor, Ben Heppner
• Artist, Jeff Wall
• Actors, Manuel Jacinto, Ludi Lin, Michael Shanks & Torrance Coombs
• Former Chief Justice of Canada, Beverley McLachlin
• Former Canadian Prime Ministers, John Turner & Kim Campbell
• Current Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau