Fonds F0165 - Arthur Forer fonds

Arthur Forer, scientist and professor, was born in Trenton, New Jersey. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating in 1957 with a B.Sc. in biology. He completed a PhD in molecular biology in 1964 at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire. His PhD dissertation is entitled “Evidence for two spindle fiber components: a study of chromosome movement in living crane fly (Nephrotoma suturalis) spermatocytes, using polarization microscopy and ultraviolet microbeam.”

Forer’s career as a biologist began as an American Cancer Society research fellow at the Carlsberg Foundation Biological Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, a position he held from 1964 to 1966. He then took a position as a research fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge between 1966 and 1967 before serving as the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation research fellow in the same department from 1967 to 1969. Forer returned to the United States between 1969 and 1970 to work again as a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation research fellow and Hargitt research fellow at the Department of Zoology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Forer’s teaching career began in earnest in 1970, when he took a lecturer position at Odense University in Denmark, a position he held until 1972. He arrived in Canada in 1972 and began his long career as a professor in the Department of Biology at York University, first as an associate professor (1972-1975), professor (1975-2001) and then professor emeritus (2001- ).

Forer has been a member of the American Society for Cell Biology and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He died on 6 June 2024.