Canada’s Preeminent Neuropsychologist Dr. Brenda Milner is Newest Inductee to Canada’s Walk of Fame

About Brenda Milner

Milner’s career spans an unprecedented 70 years, 60 of those years as a researcher at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University. Her contributions and research in clinical neuropsychology revolutionized our understanding of how brain structures govern different learning, memory, and speech functions, exploring the interaction between the brain’s left and right hemispheres while studying the behaviour of young adult patients with epilepsy. She is a pioneer in cognitive neuroscience and is world-renowned for her work on memory.

Born in Manchester, England, on July 15, 1918, Milner began studying at Cambridge University in 1936. During the Second World War, she worked in Britain’s Ministry of Supply, where she met her future husband, Peter Milner. While completing her MA at Cambridge in 1944, Brenda and Peter moved to Canada, where Peter, an electrical engineer, was invited to work with physicists on atomic research. Settling in Montreal, Milner joined the Institut de Psychologie at the Université de Montréal, where she taught for seven years. In 1950, she resumed her academic studies at McGill University in the Department of Psychology, investigating the intellectual effects of temporal lobe damage in humans, earning herself a Ph.D. in 1952. In an early example of cognitive neuroscience research, Milner discovered the existence of multiple memory systems in humans, ground-breaking at the time and spurring a huge body of international research. She also showed that the temporal lobes of the brain play a key role in memory.

The 1957 article – Scoville and Milner, 1957 – published the results of her memory research, catapulting her as one of Canada’s best-known scientists, garnering national and international media attention. The article has since become one of the most cited publications in neuroscience.

Milner is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Order of Canada, the Dan David Prize and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, the Prix Hommage du 50e anniversaire from the Ordre des psychologues de Quebec and induction into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. In 2007, The Brenda Milner Foundation was created thanks to a major donation by Milner to support post-doctoral fellowships in cognitive neuroscience at The Neuro. The American Psychological Association (APA) created the Brenda A. Milner Award for the best paper in behavioural neuroscience by a recent Ph.D. graduate. These sponsorships ensure that Milner’s name will continue to resonate in the neuroscience community for years to come.

About Sanofi Canada

We are an innovative global healthcare company, driven by one purpose: we chase the miracles of science to improve people’s lives. Our team, across some 100 countries, is dedicated to transforming the practice of medicine by working to turn the impossible into the possible. We provide potentially life-changing treatment options and life-saving vaccine protection to millions of people globally, while putting sustainability and social responsibility at the center of our ambitions.

In Canada, we employ approximately 2,000 people. In 2021, we invested more than $143 million in research and development in Canada, creating jobs, business, and opportunity throughout the country. In 2021, Sanofi announced an investment of $925 million (CAD) in a new vaccine manufacturing facility at our existing site in Toronto, Canada.