Leo Yaffe

Leo Yaffe, (July 6, 1916 – May 14, 1997) was a Canadian nuclear chemistry scientist and a proponent of the peaceful uses of nuclear power.

Born in Devils Lake, North Dakota, his family moved to Winnipeg in 1920. He studied at the University of Manitoba receiving a B.Sc.(Hons) in 1940, a M.Sc. in 1941, and was awarded an honorary D.Sc. in 1982. He received a Ph.D. in 1943 from McGill University.

In 1943, he was recruited by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to work at the Manhattan Project's Montreal Laboratory, moving to the Chalk River Laboratories, on the banks of the Ottawa River, in Ontario, at the end of the war. He remained with the AECL until 1952. His research group developed intense sources of the radioactive isotope cobalt-60 used for treatment of cancer, and radioactive tracers for medical diagnosis.

In 1952, he moved to McGill University, where he studied nuclear reactions using the J.S. Foster cyclotron had just been built at McGill. In 1958 he became the Macdonald Professor of Chemistry.

Honours Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, 1959 Doctor of Letters, Trent University, 1980 Officer, Order of Canada, 1988 Prix Marie-Victorin, Prix du Québec, 1990

Quotes "People, unfortunately, tend to equate nuclear with bombs. I'm a passionate believer in the peaceful purposes of nuclear energy. What people don't realize is how many people are being helped to surmount medical problems with nuclear medicine." "The transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next remains for me the most noble of the professions."