Charles Scriver

Who is Charles Scriver?

Charles Robert Scriver, CC GOQ FRSC FRS is an eminent Canadian pediatrician and biochemical geneticist. Scriver made many important contributions to our knowledge of inborn errors of metabolism. He led in establishing a nationwide newborn metabolic screening program that is considered a landmark in applying the results of research to children's health across an entire nation.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Scriver graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1951 and from the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University in 1955. He was appointed to the Department of Paediatrics at McGill and as a Markle scholar in 1961, becoming a professor in pediatrics in 1969. He was the Samuel Rudin Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Columbia University from 1979 to 1980. He is the Alva professor Emeritus of Human Genetics in the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University. In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious Pollin Prize for Pediatric Research.

Scriver played a critical role in developing scientific and ethical policies associated with the international Human Genome Project - created to decode more than three billion DNA base pairs and identify all the genes.