Edwin Embrey Daniel

Dr. Edwin Embrey Daniel

September 23, 1925 - June 27, 2022

Father of Canadian Smooth Muscle Research

Dr. E. E. Daniel was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and raised by his high school Chemistry teacher single mother.  He won a scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins University just as the Second World War got underway.  His studies were interrupted by service in the US Army. After a year of service in Europe he stepped on a landmine and had his left leg amputated below the knee, ending his army career.

He went back to Hopkins, and later earned his PhD in pharmacology at the University of Utah.  His experiences also pushed him into political activism; Dr. Daniel found himself on McCarthy’s list, and he was advised he would never get a job in the U.S.  Offered a job at UBC in Vancouver, he moved to Canada and never looked back.

Dr. Daniel spent more than 60 years as a professor and researcher teaching Pharmacology at Medical schools across Canada. His research studied smooth muscles, such as those in the gut, uterus and airways. Dr. Daniel was the first chairman of the University of Alberta Pharmacology Department in 1962. He later started the first research program on smooth muscle in Canada at McMaster University in 1978 and was director of a Medical Research Council Centre of Excellence there. He initiated an honours co-op program and his contributions changed the way students are taught and selected. He promoted problem-based learning instead of lectures, added life experience to the student selection process, and improved gender equity in the faculties he worked in. In the course of his work, he published 99 chapters in books, and 594 papers in research journals, with more still under review.

Dr. Daniel "retired from being paid” in 1994 but stayed at McMaster until 2001, later returning to the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Alberta Medical School in Edmonton to continue his research. He kept working, financing his research on grants and self-financing, until his final PhD student completed his program.  He continued as a peer reviewer in pharmacology and neuroscience for many years.   Former students remember Dr. Daniel with respectful fear because his breadth of knowledge was wide, and his questions penetrating.

To a significant degree, his success in science and life were made possible by the constant support he received from his wife and soul-mate, Virginia. In retirement, he and Virginia moved to Victoria, B.C. where he focused his remaining years on activism in politics and social justice.  At 96 and in failing health, he chose medical assistance in dying as the scientific solution to his medical issues.

Dr. Daniel is survived by his wife Virginia Posey Daniel, his half-brother Randy (Lois) Daniel, sons Mike (Carleen Ellis) Daniel and Tim (Madelene) Daniel, and grandsons Benjamin James Daniel and Matthew Jarrett Daniel.

In lieu of flowers or planting a tree, please contribute to the

Dr Edwin E Daniel Graduate Scholarship in Pharmacology at the University of Alberta