- 23226
- Person
- 1927-2022
Patrick McGeer was born in Vancouver in 1927. He studied chemistry at UBC and played basketball for the UBC Thunderbirds, representing Canada on the 1948 Olympic team. He later studied at Princeton, earning a PhD in 1951. In the early 1950s he worked for DuPont Chemical where he helped develop Teflon. This is where he met fellow research chemist, Dr. Edith Graef. They married in April 1954 and moved to Vancouver, where Pat obtained his medical degree from the University of British Columbia and Edith volunteered as an assistant at UBC’s neurochemistry lab.
McGeer represented the Vancouver-Point Grey riding from 1962 to 1986, first as a Liberal and later as part of Bill Bennett's Social Credit government holding several cabinet positions, including Minister of Education. As Minister of Universities, Sciences and Technology, he started North America's first open university (Knowledge Network), sponsored engineering programs at Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria, encouraged BC's technology industry with the Discovery Foundation, collaborated with the Ministry of Health to build a teaching hospital at UBC, and proposed a fixed link to Vancouver Island. He was also the minister responsible for the Insurance Corporation of B.C.
After leaving politics in 1986, McGeer focused on science, spending decades researching Alzheimer's disease alongside his wife, Edith. The couple collaborated on 3 books and more than 1000 research papers documenting discoveries that led to new treatments for diseases ranging from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's. Both were awarded the Order of Canada for their research. They also received the Order of British Columbia. Pat McGeer died on August 29, 2022.