Dr. Samuel Freedman and Dr. Phil Gold are award-winning scientists, researchers, physicians and administrators from Montreal.
Freedman graduated from Westmount High School while Gold is a graduate of Montreal’s famed Baron Byng High School. Both went on to receive their medical degrees from McGill University. In 1965, they co-discovered the first human cancer tumor marker to achieve clinical use – carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The presence of this antigen, measurable in blood, was first discovered in patients with colorectal cancer, and can detect the presence of other cancers, as well. It has since become a routine medical test in hospitals around the world.
Freedman and Gold have both been named to the Order of Canada and the National Order of Quebec. They are both Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, and recipients of the Prix Armand Frappier from the government of Quebec as well as the prestigious Gairdner Foundation International Award, seen as second only to the Nobel Prize. They have both received Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee medals. Gold has received the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal, and has been inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.
Among their many senior positions, Freedman served as Dean of Medicine and then Vice-Principal, Academic (Provost) at McGill as well as Director of Research at the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital while Gold was the Douglas G. Cameron Professor of Medicine at McGill and Physician-in-Chief at the Montreal General Hospital.
