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The teaching of chemistry at Dalhousie College was introduced in 1842 by Professor James MacIntosh, although the chemistry department dates from 1863 with the appointment of the first chair, Professor George Lawson, who taught chemistry and botany at Dalhousie for 32 years. Ebenezer MacKay, who graduated in 1886 with first-class honours in experimental physics and chemistry, returned to Dalhousie in 1896 with a PhD from Johns Hopkins University to become the second professor of chemistry following Lawson's death.

The first postgraduate chemistry degree was conferred on James Forrest in 1871, and 11 more Dalhousie BA graduates received MA degrees between 1871 and 1934. In 1904, the first Master of Science degree was awarded to W.H. Ross, but research in chemistry did not flourish at Dalhousie until the arrival of Carl C. Coffin in 1930. When the Department of Chemistry received approval for a PhD program in 1960, the number of accepted MSc theses numbered only 62 after more than a half century. Dalhousie's first PhD in chemistry was granted to St. John H. Blakeley in 1964. Since then, some 500 alumni have received MSc and PhD degrees from the Chemistry Department, a number that increases by about 15 each year. Today the department's graduate program is the largest east of Montreal and the only PhD chemistry graduate program in Nova Scotia.

Jim Clark is an award-winning photographer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He graduated in 1971 from a Halifax Campus Community College photography course as the top student and began his career as a darkroom technician and photographer with Wamboldt-Waterfield Photography Ltd.

From 1971-1975 he worked for the Dalhousie University Life Sciences Audiovisual Department as a bio-medical photographer. He pursued freelance work from 1975-1978, while also managing a retail photography department and travelling throughout Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as a representative for Maritime Color Labs.

A year after returning to Wamboldt-Waterfield as a photojournalist in the summer of 1978, Clark became a business partner, acquiring full ownership in 1985 and changing the company's name to Clark Photographic Ltd. after Terry Waterfield's 1990 retirement. In 1998 he formed a partnership with photographer Gary Castle, and Clark Photographic became Digiscan Photographic, reflecting the changes in imaging technology.

Clark continued to work as a photographer in commercial, advertising and special events throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. From 1995-1996 he had a contract with Dalhousie's Medical Computing Media Services (later MED IT), and in 2001 he became the medical photographer and videoconferencing coordinator for Dalhousie, where he worked until 2011.

John Shenstone Roper was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, but was largely educated in Halifax, attending first Halifax County Academy and then Dalhousie University, where he earned a BA in 1910, an MA in 1911 (by examination in Shakespeare), and an LLB in 1913. He was editor of The Dalhousie Gazette and, while at law school, served as a lieutenant with the Dalhousie branch of the Canadian Officers' Training Corp (COTC). Roper practised law in Halifax for several years before receiving a commission in the 85th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. After various assignments at home, he was made an acting captain in 1917 and sent overseas in early 1918, where he fought in France and was awarded the Military Cross. He continued his military involvement after returning to Halifax, practicing law alongside serving as a brigade major and later the commanding officer of his former COTC.

He was a solicitor for the Nova Scotia Highways Board for three years before being appointed to the Nova Scotia Public Utilities Board from 1928-1938. He sat on the Board of Governors for Dalhousie University, served as secretary-treasurer of The Dalhousie Review, and was a longtime member of the Dalhousie Alumni Society. He also was president of the Studley Quoits Club for some time in the 1930s.

John Roper was married to Gladys Una Smith in 1915, whom he met when they were both students at Dalhousie. Their marriage ended in divorce with no children. He died at Camp Hill Military Hospital in 1946.

Vincent Christopher MacDonald was born in 1897 in Mulgrave, Nova Scotia, to Archibald and Clara MacDonald. He was educated at Dalhousie University where he received a BA (1930) and LLB (1920). In 1927 MacDonald married his first wife, Emily O’Connor, with whom he had three children, David, Peter, and Paul. After Emily’s death in 1937, MacDonald married Hilda Durney in 1938 and had two more children, Brian Henry and Alan Hugh.

MacDonald worked as a lawyer, educator, and civil servant. Called to the bars of Nova Scotia and Ontario in 1920 and 1927 respectively, he practiced law in both provinces; worked as a law clerk in the Nova Scotia Legislature; was a research assistant to the Royal Commission on Maritime Claims; served as secretary to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1927; and lectured in law at Dalhousie from 1920-1926 and Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto from 1929-1930. In 1930 he returned to Dalhousie to teach law and in 1934 became Dean of the Law School. He also served as Assistant Deputy Minister of Labour of Canada from 1942-1944. He remained at Dalhousie until 1950 when he was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. MacDonald worked with numerous boards and commissions throughout his career, and served as an advisor to the Newfoundland government on union with Canada in 1948. He published numerous papers, frequently on topics related to constitutional and labour law, and edited a variety of publications, including the Dominion Law Reports and Canadian Criminal Cases (1924-1934). He also served on the Board of Governors of Dalhousie University and received honorary degrees from St. Francis Xavier, British Columbia, Dalhousie, and Columbia. MacDonald died in 1964.

George Vibert Douglas was a Canadian geologist and educator. Born in Montreal on July 2, 1892, he was educated in British private schools, graduated from McGill with a BSc (1920) and MSc (1921) and pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University. He was married to Olga Margaret Chrichton, with whom he had four children.

Douglas was a captain with the British Army in World War One, serving with the 17th Northumberland Fusiliers from 1915-1919 in Flanders and France. He received the Military Cross for his efforts. From 192-1922 he worked as a geologist on a Shackleton-Rowett Antarctic expedition and subsequently spent a year at Cambridge. In 1923 he began a PhD at Harvard, where he also lectured in geology. He ended his studies prematurely in 1926 to become chief geologist at the Spanish company Rio Tinto. From 1930-1931 he was a member of the exploration of the Rhodesia-Congo Border Concession.

Douglas came to Dalhousie in the early 1930s and was appointed the first Carnegie Professor of Geology, also serving as Head of Geology from 1932-1957. He was an active member of the university community, helping to establish both the Dalhousie Art Gallery and a student employment centre to assist students seeking work in mining and related fields. He led Dalhousie expeditions to Labrador in 1946 and 1947 and served as Nova Scotia's Provincial Geologist. Douglas retired from Dalhousie in 1957 and died October 8, 1958. The Douglas Prize in Geology was established in his honour.

Eric Mills is an invertebrate zoologist, biological oceanographer, and historian of science. Born in 1936 in Toronto, Ontario, he received his BSc from Carleton University in 1959 and his MSc and PhD from Yale University in 1962 and 1964. His teaching and research included work at Carleton University; Queen’s University; the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts; and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California. From 1967-2002 he taught at both Dalhousie University and the University of King’s College, serving as chairman of Dalhousie's Department of Oceanography from 1990-1992 and as the inaugural director of King's History of Science & Technology Program from 2001-2002. He retired from full-time employment as Professor Emeritus of the History of Science in the Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, and Inglis Professor, University of King’s College.

Mills' earliest work was in marine ecology, leading to his involvement with the Hudson 70 Expedition, the first Canadian biological oceanographic research in the Antarctic. His later studies in the history of science included nineteenth-century natural history, the development of biological and physical oceanography, and the history of Canadian science. He has maintained vigorous personal and professional interest in birds and birding throughout his life.

Dalhousie Library and Information Alumni Association was founded in early 1974, being approved by the school's alumni and accepted as a legitimate entity by the Dalhousie Alumni Association. Its founding members included school director Norman Horrocks, John Murchie, who was appointed chairfellow, Elaine Rillie as chairfellow, and Bernie Coyl as secretary.

The Associated Alumni meet on a regular basis and sponsor social gatherings and professional workshops to advance the interests of the library profession, particularly education for librarianship; to promote the best interests of the Dalhousie School of Information Management; and to promote the professional objectives and interests of its individual members.

Science Atlantic is a federally incorporated, non-profit organization representing 18 post-secondary and research institutes in Atlantic Canada. It was founded in 1962 as the Atlantic Provinces Inter-University Committee on the Sciences (APICS) to encourage collaboration across Maritime universities and the government sector.

With offices in Dalhousie University's Life Sciences Building, the organization continues to provide networking and conference opportunities for undergraduate science students and faculty. Its activities include annual academic conferences in ten disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields; lecture tours by notable scientists; awards recognizing research and science communication skills; travel assistance for students to attend conferences; and workshops for faculty and students.

Andrew Doane Merkel was a journalist and poet. Born in New York State in 1884, he came to Nova Scotia when his father, Rev. A. Deb Merkel, took over a parish in Digby. He was educated at King's College, Windsor, and spent most of his adult life in Halifax.

Merkel began his career writing for the Philadelphia North American and the Sydney Record. He was news editor of the Saint John Standard from 1908 until 1910, when he came to Halifax as editor of the Halifax Echo. In 1917 he was hired as the Maritime News Editor for the Canadian Press in Montreal. He returned to Halifax in 1919 when he was appointed Superintendent of the Canadian Press's Atlantic Division. By his retirement in 1946 Merkel had covered a range of regional, national and international stories that included Marconi’s transmission from Cape Breton; the sinking of the Titanic; the first airplane flight in the British Empire; and two world wars. He retired to Port Royal where he purchased a large property adjacent to the Port Royal Habitation, hoping to establish a radio station and tourist attraction in the area. After the death of his wife in the early 1950s, Merkel returned to Halifax, where he died in 1954.

His first book-length poem, The Order of Good Cheer, completed in the early 1920s, was not published until 1944. His second, Tallahasse, was published the following year. Both works illustrate his abiding interest in Nova Scotian history. He also published two works of non-fiction: Letters from the Front (1914) and Bluenose Schooner (1948). In the 1920s Merkel was a member of the Halifax literary group The Song Fishermen; he and his wife, Florence (Tully) E. Sutherland, regularly hosted writers and artists at their South End home, including Bliss Carman, Charles G.D. Roberts, Charles Bruce, Kenneth Leslie and Robert Norwood.

William Bliss Carman was a poet and editor born on April 15, 1861 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. A descendant of United Empire Loyalists, Carman attended the Fredericton Collegiate School and the University of New Brunswick. He developed a love of classical literature while attending Fredericton Collegiate, where he was introduced to the poetry of Rossetti and Swinburne by headmaster George Robert Parkin. His own first published poem appeared in the University of New Brunswick Monthly in 1879.

Carman served as editor of the New York Independent, Current Literature, Cosmopolitan, The Chap-Book and The Atlantic Monthly. His first book of poetry, Low Tide on Grand Pre, was published in 1893, followed by Songs of Vagabondia in 1894. In total he published over 25 collections of poetry.

During the 1920s Carman was a member of The Song Fishermen, a Halifax-based literary and social set that included Charles G.D. Roberts (Carman’s cousin), Andrew Merkel, Robert Norwood, Evelyn Tufts, Stewart MacAuley, Kenneth Leslie, and Ethel Butler. He was named Canada’s Poet Laureate on October 28, 1921. He died in 1929 in New Canaan, Connecticut, where he had moved to be near Mary Perry King, one of his greatest literary influences.

Journalist and poet Kenneth Leslie was born in 1892 to businessman Robert Jamieson and Bertha (Starratt) Leslie in Pictou, Nova Scotia. He was raised and educated in Halifax, where he attended the Arnold School (a one-room private school), and Alexandra School. At age fourteen he entered Dalhousie University and received his BA in 1912. This was followed by one year of study at the Colgate Theological Seminary, an MA at the University of Nebraska (1914), and further graduate studies in philosophy and mysticism at Harvard University. Throughout this time, Leslie developed an appreciation of poetry, socialism and mysticism that would dominate his later life.

On his return to Halifax, Leslie married Elizabeth Moir, daughter of Halifax businessman James Moir. They had four children: Kathleen, Gloria, Rosaleen and Kenneth Alexander (later Alexander Moir). With James Moir’s support, Leslie experimented with a number of unsuccessful business ventures including farming and investment. During this time he also joined an informal Halifax literary group called the Song Fishermen.

Leslie moved to New York City where he experimented with preaching, broadcasting, composing music and acting. He continued to write poetry and was published in The Song Fishermens’ Song Sheet as well as Literary Digest and Scribner’s Magazine. In 1934 he published his first book of poetry, Windward Rock, which coincided with the end of his marriage. Between 1936–1938 Leslie published three more poetry books, including By Stubborn Stars and Other Poems, which won the 1938 Governor General’s Award. He also founded the religious and politically-minded magazine Protestant Digest (later called The Protestant) with his second wife, Marjorie Finlay Hewitt, and the assistance of three Nova Scotians—Ralph (Kelly) Morton, Sanford Archibald and Gerald Richardson. In 1943 Leslie established the Textbook Commission to eliminate anti-Semitic statements in American textbooks, and in 1944 he published an anti-fascist comic book called The Challenger. As publisher and editor of The Protestant, Leslie corresponded with many prominent American political and social figures and became a popular public speaker.

During the late 1940s Leslie's reputation as anti-Catholic and pro-communist began to grow; there were staff problems at The Protestant; and his marriage to Marjorie ended. In 1949 Leslie and his third wife, Cathy, returned to Halifax when Leslie and The Protestant drew criticism from Senator McCarthy for un-American activity. Leslie’s third marriage dissolved shortly after his return to Nova Scotia. He continued to publish The Protestant and successor periodicals from Nova Scotia on a smaller scale until 1972 when his health declined. He also worked sporadically as a taxi driver and teacher while continuing to write and publish poetry. In the early 1960s he married his fourth wife, Nora Steenerson. Kenneth Leslie died in Halifax in 1974.

Susan Leslie Campbell was a philosopher and teacher at Dalhousie University from 1992 until her death in 2011. She was born in Edmonton and completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in Alberta before receiving a PhD from the University of Toronto. Her work in philosophy of memory and psychology is internationally recognized and wide-ranging in its scope, encompassing disciplines including women's and gender studies, public policy, psychology, cultural studies and law.

“Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression,” published in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 9.3 (1994), was chosen in 2010 as one of the 16 most influential and significant articles to be published in the journal's history. Campbell’s first book, Interpreting the Personal: Expression and the Formation of Feelings (1997), was shortlisted for the Canadian Philosophical Association Book Prize. Relational Remembering: Rethinking the Memory Wars (2003) was awarded the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Prize and was named a Choice Notable Academic Title. She also co-edited two collections of original essays: Racism and Philosophy (1999) and Embodiment and Agency (2009).

Campbell was commissioned to prepare two discussion papers for the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “Challenges to Memory in Political Contexts: Recognizing Disrespectful Challenge” and “Remembering for the Future: Memory as a Lens on the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission," both of which were republished posthumously in Our Faithfulness to the Past: The Ethics and Politics of Memory (2014).

McCurdy Printing Co. was a Halifax printing firm operating from ca.1906 to 1999. It was established by John Archibald McCurdy and later taken over by his son William Hue McCurdy, who assumed the position of president. William McCurdy also established Petheric Press, one of the first small publishing companies in Nova Scotia, which specialized in Nova Scotia historical works and was active from 1967 to 1984.

McCurdy Printing saw a variety of owners after McCurdy sold the business in the late 1970s. It was first purchased by Doug McCallum and two other entrepreneurs who sold the business again in 1988. The company was then owned by Brunswick Capital Group Ltd. and the Annapolis Basin Group before Newfoundland Capital Corporation Ltd. acquired it in 1999. That same year, Newfoundland Capital merged McCurdy with Atlantic Nova Print to form Print Atlantic.

Dalhousie Legal Aid Service is a community-based office in the north-central neighbourhood of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It also is a clinical program for law students operated by the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. Its funding is provided by the Schulich School of Law, the Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission, the Law Foundation of Nova Scotia and clinic alumni, friends of Dalhousie Legal Aid Service and special events.

Dalhousie Legal Aid Service has been in operation since 1970, when it began as a summer project out of the former Halifax Neighbourhood Centre. It was the first legal Service for low-income communities in Nova Scotia and is the oldest clinical law program in Canada. In fact, it is the only community law clinic in Nova Scotia. The Clinic is a unique partnership of community groups, law students, community legal workers and lawyers working together.

In addition, Dalhousie Legal Aid Service does community outreach, education, organizing, lobbying and test case litigation to combat injustices affecting persons with low incomes in Nova Scotia. Community groups and community based agencies with mandates to fight poverty and injustice may apply for legal advice, assistance, and community development and education services. The Service offers advocacy workshops and legal information sessions, and works with other groups to lobby the government on social assistance policy and other policies negatively affecting persons with low incomes.

James Doull was a Canadian philosopher and academic who was born in 1918 to Irene and John Doull, a Pictou County politician, jurist and historian. His siblings were John Doull, a naval engineer, and Mary Doull, a musician and French scholar.

Educated at Dalhousie, the University of Toronto, Harvard University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, James Doull returned to Dalhousie in the late 1940s to teach in the Classics Department. After retiring in 1983 he moved to Clarkes Beach, Newfoundland, where he lived with his wife, philosopher Floy Andrews, and taught at the University of Memorial until 1993.

His writing on Greek poetry, the culture of ancient Rome, ancient, medieval and modern philosophy, and twentieth-century politics appeared only in journals, primarily Dionysius, of which he was a founding editor, and Animus. In 2003 the University of Toronto Press published a posthumous volume containing a number of his works along with commentary by former colleagues and students.

In 1989, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of King's College, Halifax. He died in 2003.

Judth Fingard is an historian with research interests in Canadian social history, including religion, class, gender, race and disability. She was educated at Dalhousie University and the University of London, where she earned a PhD in 1970. From 1967-1997 she taught history at Dalhousie University, also serving as coordinator of Women's Studies (1989) and Dean of Graduate Studies (1990-1995).

From the late 1990s Fingard served terms as president of the Canadian Historical Association and the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Association. For her contributions to Canadian history she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1991. She received a number of other awards and honours, including the John Lyman Book Award (1982), the Hilda Neatby Prize (1990) and the Evelyn Richardson Memorial Award (1990).

In addition to a wide range of scholarly articles, biographical entries and book reviews, Fingard wrote The Anglican Design in Loyalist Nova Scotia (1972); Jack in Port: Sailortowns of Eastern Canada (1982); The Dark Side of Life in Victorian Halifax (1989); Halifax (Canada): The First 250 Years (1999), with Janet Guilford and David Sutherland; Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (2005), with Janet Guildford; and Protect, Befriend, Respect: Nova Scotia’s Mental Health Movement, 1908–2008 (2008), with John Rutherford.

Lothar Richter founded the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) at Dalhousie University in 1936. Born in 1894 in Silesia, Germany, Richter studied classics, philosophy and Lutheran ideology and earned doctoral degrees in both political science and law. In 1920 he became a civil servant in the Reich Department of Labour in Berlin, helping to draft the new Poor Law and other legislation around workers' compensation, health and employment. In 1933 he moved to England with his wife and young son, having obtained a temporary position at Leeds University through the help of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In 1934 Carleton Stanley hired Richter as a professor of German, with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation funding his salary. After founding the IPA, which was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation in recognition of the need for greater regional economic and social development, Richter handed over his German courses to his wife, Johanna. The work of the institute contributed to the local community through the development of the Nova Scotia Bureau, Maritime Bureau of Industrial Relations, and the Maritime Labour Institute. Richter also established Public Affairs, Dalhousie’s second quarterly publication. He died in 1948 after a traffic accident.

Janet Stephanie (Jenny) Munday was born in Toronto in 1953 and grew up in New Brunswick and Quebec. She completed a secretarial course at the Capital Business College of Fredericton in 1974 and studied political science at the University of New Brunswick, graduating in 1978. Munday has worked as an actor in theatre companies across Canada, appearing at Theatre New Brunswick, Neptune Theatre, The National Arts Centre, Ship’s Company Theatre, Rising Tide Theatre and the Banff Playwrights Colony. She has also acted in film, television and radio. Munday is also a director and dramaturge and has written several works for the stage, including Relatively Harmless, The Last Tasmanian and Battle Fatigue. Other work includes radio drama, magazine articles and reviews.

Munday was co-founder and co-artistic director of the Comedy Asylum in the early 1980s. From 1989-1992 she was artistic director of the Mulgrave Road Co-op Theatre. From 1993-1995 she served as artistic associate and writer-in-residence at Theatre New Brunswick, and was the first artist-in-residence at Live Bait Theatre. Munday was the fourth Crake Fellow in Drama at Mount Allison University from 2004-2008 and is currently artistic director of Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre (PARC).

Among the many awards and recognitions that Munday has received are a Theatre Nova Scotia Merritt Special Achievement Award; the inaugural Mallory Gilbert Award from the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) and Tarragon Theatre; and an honorary membership to the Canadian Association for Theatre Research.

Registered in 1978 as Mulgrave Road Co-operative Theatre, the company's origins date back to 1976, with the creation of "The Mulgrave Road Show," co-written and performed by Robbie O’Neill, Michael Fahey, Gay Hauser and Wendell Smith. The play explored the issues faced by a community in decline. Mulgrave, located on the eastern shore of Nova Scotia across from Cape Breton Island, had experienced a sustained recession after the 1954 construction of the Canso Causeway.

Mulgrave Road Theatre has a mandate to develop, produce and promote a theatrical experience that resonates with Atlantic Canadians. The company has made a significant contribution to the growth of Canadian theatre and the development of Atlantic Canadian artists, having produced dozens of original scripts, many of which have been performed on stages across the country and beyond

MRT also plays a leading role in ground-breaking community development projects; using theatre as a medium to address critical social issues that affect the region. MRT is committed to equity and inclusion throughout its organization and demonstrates this in its programming, outreach, and people.

Mulgrave productions are developed through commissions, playwrights-in-residence, on-site and distance dramaturgy, and work-shopping. In the beginning, scripts were largely collective creations, such as "Business of Living," which was written by 18 Atlantic playwrights. Other notable productions included "I’m Assuming I’m Right" (Frank MacDonald), "From Fogarty’s Cove" (Ric Knowles), "Battle Fatigue" (Jenny Munday), "Marion Bridge" (Daniel MacIvor), and "Caribou" (Michael Melski). Two or three productions are mounted each year. In addition to its touring company, Mulgrave offers a youth program called ROADies.

Mulgrave Road Theatre has a governing board made up of professionals and community members. It is a member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, the Nova Scotia Theatre Alliance, and Arts Cape Breton.

Christopher Heide is a poet and playwright. Born in 1951 in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, where his father was stationed, he spent his childhood moving between Armed Forces bases in England and across Canada. After completing secondary school in Ottawa, he moved to East Dover, Nova Scotia, where he began to write and publish poetry and short fiction. After moving to Halifax with his wife, Deborah Hickman, he started to write for theatre and radio. In 1976 he received a grant to attend Banff Playwrights Colony and in 1977 he was a playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, where he wrote his first full-length play, On the Lee Side.

In 1979 he joined Mulgrave Road Co-op Theatre Company in Guysborough, Nova Scotia, co-creating The Coady Co-op Show and later writing Bring Back Don Messer. He served Mulgrave as artistic director between 1987-1989. He was also a playwright-in-residence at Mermaid Theatre in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, before being appointed director of Mermaid Youtheatre. In 2005 he became artistic director of Chester Playhouse.

Writing for radio, television and the theatre, Heide has had dozens of plays professionally produced in almost every Canadian province and abroad. He also has three books of poetry in print and has been the recipient of several awards for his writing. His work has included community development projects, in particular working with children and youth. He is also active in various professional associations and was a co-founder of the Dramatists Co-op of Nova Scotia.

Alexander H. Leighton was a sociologist and psychologist and the lead researcher of the seminal Stirling County Study in psychiatric epidemiology, the longest running study of its kind to understand the prevalence and types of mental illness across generations in a cross-cultural community. Born on 17 July 1908 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received a BA from Princeton University (1932), an MSc from Cambridge University (1934), and an MD from Johns Hopkins Medical School (1936). He held professorial appointments in both the departments of psychiatry and community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie University, as well as in sociology and anthropology at Cornell, and he was professor emeritus at Harvard. He also served on multiple advisory committees for the governments of Canada and the United States and for the World Health Organization, and over his lifetime received a multitude of awards and honours. He died in 2007.

In 1948 Leighton initiated the first of the post-war studies of the distribution and prevalence of mental illness in a general population. The Stirling County Study is still active and from Leighton's retirement from Harvard University in 1975, it was directed by his wife and research partner, Dr. Jane Murphy Leighton. One of its initial findings in Nova Scotia, was that one in five adults experiences mental illness, most commonly depression, anxiety and/or alcohol abuse. Similar studies were carried out in other settings, including New York City, Alaska, Nigeria and Vietnam. Other investigations of this type now number in the hundreds and have been conducted across the world.

Robert Henry Graham was a barrister and politician born in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, on 30 November 1871, the son of Jane (Marshall) and John George Graham. He graduated from Dalhousie University with his BA in 1892 and LLB in 1894, and was called to the Nova Scotia Bar that same year. In 1913 he became King's counsel (crown attorney) and in 1925 was appointed to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. He was also a stipendiary magistrate from 1906-1920.

Graham served New Glasgow as town councillor in 1898 and as mayor from 1899-1900 before entering provincial politics and representing Pictou County as a Liberal in the House of Assembly from 1916-1925. Following his career in politics, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. He died in 1956 at the age of 85.