News & Media
Remembering David Colman, Polymath-in-Chief
Principal and Vice-Chancellor, McGill University
"He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again."
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2
Empathic. Fiercely determined. Charmingly disheveled. Brilliant.
A Shakespearean rhapsody of words seems a fitting way to capture the essence of David Colman, visionary Director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro) at McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre, world-renowned research scientist, professor and clinician, and virtuoso author of his monthly Director’s Corner essays.
David Colman used his Director’s Corner to communicate his knowledge, passion and boundless curiosity. He wrote, accessibly, on complex issues of importance and he provoked us to think – about the Macondo oil spill and Monet’s “cataract palette”; about stem cells and orchid evolution; LSD experiments and clichés; creation science and palliative care. It is a sad privilege that I reflect on Dave as polymath and friend, and on his legacy and lasting impact on The Neuro and McGill, the broader scientific community, and, his role in advancing the very promising future of modern neuroscience.
My husband, Len, and I first met Dave in the early 1970s through a common friend. He was then a worldly, banjo-playing graduate student in New York, studying for his PhD in Neuroscience at SUNY. At the time, my husband was a musician, and I was a young undergraduate student. I recall one particularly memorable dinner we had together in the Big Apple, when Dave led us up three stories of a rickety back staircase of an old building (beer hidden in a brown bag under his arm) to our very first ever Szechuan meal, and Dave’s smile of delight when we mistook the cold water served at meal’s end for finger bowls, just as hot, candied bananas arrived at the table, with great ceremony, along with the shocked expression of the poor server.
In the spring of 2002, after not having seen each other for thirty years, our paths crossed again, here in Montreal, when within a week or so of each other, we were appointed to our respective positions at McGill and the Montreal Neurological Institute. Dave Colman could have emerged as any number of things, including a world-class musician or an ornithologist, but we are hugely fortunate that he chose science as his formal profession, and that, with a compelling world vision for neurosciences, he served at the helm of the Neuro for nine exciting years. While he was renowned and respected for many things, it was his creativity and great passion for The Neuro, his respect for its distinguished history, and his sense of its remarkable future potential, which truly set him apart.
David’s personal mission and values were in perfect harmony with the historic mission of the Institute and its founder, Dr. Wilder Penfield. As Dave’s remarks at The Neuro’s 75th Anniversary Symposium in 2009 retrospectively – and poignantly – suggest: “The guideposts of The Neuro have been from the outset curiosity about how the brain works, compassion for our patients, and selfless community service. Once set in motion in 1934, and up until the present, we have ... worked with the interests of the people of Quebec, Canada and the world uppermost in our minds. We have been faithful stewards of the brilliant plan given to us by the great thinkers of the past – the architects and creators of this place, and the legacies of those who have worked tirelessly in its service over these many decades.”
The Neuro’s guideposts were always David’s own. Honouring Penfield’s original vision of the close integration of neuroscience research and clinical practice, he doggedly guarded the integrity and distinctiveness of The Neuro, preserving its outstanding reputation by attracting and nurturing the best scientists, by constructing novel research collaborations with scientists locally and around the world, and by engaging everyone from politicians, architects and civic leaders, to young high school students, in the great promise and power of the Neuro. David rightfully championed The Neuro as a neurosciences jewel, and under his watch, its national and international reputations were reasserted. He approached science with a commitment to basic, curiosity-driven research and he applied his compassionate, empathic nature to fully realizing its benefits for humankind. He approached each of the problems he encountered, as a unique puzzle to be solved.
Perhaps less well-known but equally impressive were David’s gifts as a teacher and as an iconoclastic thinker. It was his greatest joy to provoke and foster the curiosity of others, and to awaken in them the excitement of the brain and scientific discovery. His ability to visualize and explain science to novices was amazing, and his memory for all that he read and saw, allowed him to weave inspiration from wide-ranging sources, as demonstrated in his Director’s Corners. Referencing sources from Lewis Carroll to Daniel Dennett, cartoonist Charles Schulz to Isaac Asimov, his engagement with the world around him, and his belief in making the impossible, possible, were evident.
In one of his first Director’s Corners, December 2003, he quoted George Santayana’s advice to academics: “Don’t be safe, be brilliant.” David Colman knew how to do that better than anyone. He taught us about passion and persistence, about vision and wisdom. He also taught us about friendship.
This spring, in one of his final Director’s Corners, he made the following observation: “The earth calls upon tremendous resources to heal itself in times of great insult.” As we offer our condolences to his wife, Liz, and his daughters, Monica and Miranda, we mourn the loss of a remarkable leader, colleague, and friend, and we comfort ourselves in remembering the tremendous gifts he left behind.
The Tempest was David’s favourite play. It seems fitting, then, to let the Director have the last word:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant
faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
~ Prospero, Tempest 4.1
