Alain m. bellemare, president, pratt & whitney canada.</p> <p>mcgill attracts the brightest students, so it is no surprise that our alumni go on to become leaders in their fields. from business, to politics, to art, mcgill"

• McGill grads are CEOs of a large number of companies including the Bay, Canadian Pacific Railway, Jean Coutu, Telus, Pratt & Whitney Canada, the Laurentian Bank of Canada, Aldo Shoes and Le Château.
• William Chalmers, PhD'30, invented Plexiglas while a graduate student at McGill.
• McGill graduate James Naismith, BA1887, invented basketball in 1891.
• Seven Academy Award winners, including film producer Edward Saxon, BA'82, Burt Bacharach, Dip AMus'48, and National Film Board animator John Weldon, BSc'66.
• Nobel Prize winners Andrew Victor Schally (Medicine, 1977), BSc'55, PhD'57, DSc'59; Val Fitch (Physics, 1980), BEng'48; David Hubel (Medicine, 1981), BSc'47, MDCM'51; Rudolph Marcus (Chemistry, 1993), BSc'43, PhD'46, DSc'88.
• Supreme Court of Canada justices Ian Binnie, BA'60, Marie Deschamps, LLM'83, and Morris Fish, BA'59, BCL'62.
• TV actors William Shatner, BCom'52 (Star Trek, Boston Legal), Jessalyn Gilsig, BA'93 (Nip/Tuck), Cameron Mathison, BEng'93 (All My Children), and Jamie Elman, BA'99 (American Dreams).
• McGill students and graduates have collectively won three Olympic gold medals, five silvers and ten bronzes at various games.
• Other McGill graduates of note include Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga, PhD'65, Auditor General Sheila Fraser, BCom'72, singer/poet Leonard Cohen, BA'55, and astronauts Julie Payette, BEng'86, Dafydd Williams, BSc'76, MSc'83, MDCM'83, and Robert Thirsk, MDCM'82.
• Carrie Derick, BA1890, was the first woman to become a professor in Canada, teaching botany here at McGill.
• The first woman elected to the Quebec National Assembly, Marie-Claire Kirkland Strover, BA'47, BCL'50.