Charles Hollenberg was a physician, administrator, teacher and researcher. Born in Manitoba and educated at the University of Manitoba, he started his research career in 1960 at McGill University. After a decade there, he moved to the University of Toronto and became Chair of the Department of Medicine, where he transformed it into a place of research intensity.
He was the Director of the Banting and Best Diabetes Centre from 1981 to 1993. In 1991 he became President and CEO of the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation, which became Cancer Care Ontario under his direction.
In 1990 he was made Officer of the Order of Canada as “an acknowledged leader in medical education and patient care who has exerted a considerable influence on academic institutions and teaching hospitals through his many professional appointments, particularly as Director of the Banting and Best Diabetes Centre, Vice- Provost of Health Sciences and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. His impact on the health care of Canadians is evident in the positions of responsibility held by the many top young clinical scientists whom he recruited and trained.” He was awarded the Canada Gairdner Wightman Award in 1999, “for outstanding contributions to Canadian medicine and as a leader of the Canadian academic medical community.”
Dr Hollenberg received a grant from the Banting Research Foundation in 1965 while at McGill University researching lipid metabolism.
