dolichols, and eicosanoids. Working with his colleagues in neurology, genetics and pathology, he became a master detective in unraveling the relationships of these arcane chemical factors in a number of eponymic neurological disorders such as Kuf’s syndrome, Batten’s disease, and the syndromes of Tay-Sachs, Hermansky-Padlack, Fabry and Krabbe.

The action in the Donner laboratory was driven by Leon’s passionate curiosity and sustained by his enduring enthusiasm. He was elected by the Medical Research Council of Canada as a Canada Career Investigator and later became Killam Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute as well as Professor of Biochemistry at McGill University. A member of McGill’s Centre for Aging and the Nutrition and Food Science Centre, he also lectured to students in the Faculties of Medicine and Science. He published over 200 papers and contributed generously of his editorial talents to a half-dozen specialty journals, being as well Chair of the Publications Committee of the International Society for Neurochemistry.

Leon’s advent from New Zealand, by way of Cambridge and the University of Western Ontario to McGill represents a shining example of the Neuro’s "brain gain" over the past seventy years. In the early days of the Institute, Penfield, Cone, Jasper, Erickson and Rasmussen had all come from the USA. They were followed by Elliott from South Africa by way of Cambridge, Pappius from Poland, Milner from Cambridge by way of the Université de Montréal, Gloor from Switzerland and many others from many different parts. And two more New Zealanders, Terry Peters and Christopher Thompson, joined us in the 1970s to become pioneers in the research and development of our brain imaging program by CAT, PET and MRI.

Leon would have been aware of another New Zealander by the name of Ernest Rutherford, who also studied at Canterbury College and Cambridge University. He was then offered and accepted a position here on the McGill faculty. That was 100 years ago. His pioneer research on radioactivity of atoms during the five years or so he spent at McGill, gained him a Nobel prize in chemistry in 1908, not long after he returned to England.

Leon and Donald Tower, former MNI Fellow and
Neurochemist, who became Director of the
National Institute for Neurological Diseases
and Blindness, Bethesda; MD, MSA (1978)