David Shugar, Polish-born Canadian physicist, Died at 100

  Centenarian

David Shugar was born on September 10, 1915, and died on October 31, 2015.

He was a professor of the University of Warsaw.

After the First World War, David settled as a child with his parents in Canada.

1936 he concluded his education of physics at McGill University in Montreal and obtained his doctorate in 1940.

Since January 1941, he did research in biophysics in the laboratory of Research Enterprises, Limited, a Crown Company in Leaside near Toronto, later served in the Canadian Marines with the rank of Electrical Sub-Lieutenant R.C.N.V.R.

In 1946 he entered the employ of the Department of National Health and Welfare.

David was detained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1946 and charged with conspiring to hand over official secrets to the Russians, but he was found innocent at trial.

1948 to 1950 he did research at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, afterwards until 1952 at the Center for Nuclear Physics of the Free University of Brussels.

On the invitation of professor Leopold Infeld, he moved to Warsaw, where he took the post of the head of the Institute of Biochemistry at the National Institute of Hygiene.

Since 1954, he has done research in the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

In 1965, he created the Biophysics Department of the Faculty of Physics of University of Warsaw.

The same year he was elected the Chairman of the Polish Society of Medical Physics. Since 1983 he is a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

David Shugar obtained in 1969 the honorary degree from Ghent University and in 1995 from the University of Warsaw.

1999 Professor David Shugar, the founder of the Division of Biophysics and an architect of The Polish School of Molecular Biophysics, was inducted into The Royal Society of Canada.

His spouse, professor Grace Wales Shugar (1918 – 2013) created the Center of the Developmental Psycholinguistics at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Warsaw.

David passed away at the age of 100 on October 31, 2015.