Edith Graef McGeer - Society for Neuroscience

Patrick L. McGeer and
Edith Graef McGeer
Early Years
Patrick McGeer was born in Vancouver, the youngest of three children
of Judge James McGeer. His mother Ada worked as a radio
producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Although
there was no family tradition of science, both Pat and his older brother
Peter felt the allure. Pat went to the local public schools and then to the
University of British Columbia, where he graduated with first class honors
in chemistry in 1948. Still, his major interest as an undergraduate was not
chemistry but basketball. His high school friends formed the core of a team
that matured into a northwest basketball powerhouse. They beat the
Harlem Globetrotters in 1946, then considered to be the number one team
in the world. His team went on to represent Canada in the 1948 Olympic
Games. Pat was an all-star and conference scoring champion. Pat recalls
that he drifted from premedicine into chemistry and physics, mainly
because the courses seemed easy, leaving lots of time for sports. After
winning the Canadian University Basketball Championship in 1948, Pat
visited his elder brother Peter, who was completing his Ph.D. in chemistry
at Princeton. Dean Hugh Taylor offered Pat a scholarship at Princeton,
mostly on his brother's reputation. Expectations were modest: 'We are
really scraping the bottom of the barrel this year,' he said to Pat.
Pat returned from the 1948 Olympics in London to commence graduate
work. Princeton University was an inspiring place, steeped in intellectual
tradition, and then populated with legendary scientific figures. Albert
Einstein and John Von Neumann were at the Advanced Institute, Eugene
Wigner and Henry Smythe were in the physics department, and Hugh
Taylor (later Sir Hugh) and Henry Smythe's younger brother Charles
(Pat's supervisor) were in the chemistry department. Students soon
learned that their mentors were leaders in their fields. Here was a grounding
par excellence in the scientific method. Pat shared a laboratory with
George Rathmann, later to become the first employee of AMGEN and a
legendary figure in the biotechnology industry. They both worked on
microwave absorption in dielectrics, using klystrons developed in World