Annually, our Department hosts a full day seminar, in honour of the late Dr. A.C. Burton. On April 24, 2014 we are pleased to welcome Dr. Zaver Bhujwalla from Johns Hopkins Medical as our guest speaker. Dr. Bhujwalla is a Professor of Radiation and Oncology, as well as the Director of the Molecular Imaging Program. More information on Dr. Bhujwalla can be found here.
In 2013, we were pleased to host Dr. Robert Bristow as our guest speaker.
Annually, during the A.C. Burton Day, we award one student with the Alfred Jay Award. In 2013, Dr. Philip Medeiros was the recipient.
Dr. A. C. Groom was recruited to the University of Western Ontario in 1945 where he initiated the new department of Biophysics in 1947. He came to Canada from England in 1927 with a first class honours B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics from University College, London. Post-graduate work in Physics followed at the University of Toronto (Ph.D. 1932).
Subsequently he worked at the University of Rochester Medical School on energy exchanges in man and, with a Rockefeller Fellowship in Medical Physics, at the University of Pennsylvania on peripheral circulation and regulation of human body temperatures. Dr. Burton returned to Canada for war work in aviation medicine and on protective clothing at the National Research Council. After the war, Professor Burton joined the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario to establish the Department of Medical Biophysics.
He is the author of over 160 scientific papers as well as numerous texts, monographs, and reviews. He supervised some 35 graduate students (Dr. Canham being one of them) and was a brilliant and stimulating teacher of Physiology to medical students, biophysics to science students, and statistics to graduate students. Late in his career he directed his considerable energy to the challenge of the epidemiology of human cancer. The regard for Alan Burton in the scientific community has been shown by the awards received and positions to which he was elected.
In 1946 he received the M.B.E. for his scientific contributions in aviation medicine and for work on protective clothing, was elected President of the American Physiological Society (1956), the Canadian Physiological Society (1959), and Biophysical Society (1966). He was recipient of the Gairdner Foundation Award for Cardiovascular Research in 1961. In addition, he was given an honorary Law degree (L.L.D.) from the University of Alberta in 1964, an honorary L.L.D. from Brock University in 1972, and an honorary D.Sc. from The University of Western Ontario in 1974.
In April 2010, Dr. Alan C. Burton was inducted into The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame for his enormous contributions to science and medicine.
