Samuel O. Freedman

Samuel Orkin Freedman was born in Montreal on 8 May 1928, the son of Abraham O. Freedman and Elvira Freedman, née Gottheil. He had a brother, Richard. He studied at McGill University, receiving a Bachelor of Science in 1948, his Doctor of Medicine in 1953 and a diploma in internal medicine in 1958. Apart from a training period at the Roosevelt Hospital Institute of Allergy in New York and a few months in London, his education and career were spent entirely at McGill.

Freedman specialised in clinical immunology, and his early research, from about 1960, focused on common allergic conditions such as asthma and hay fever. He became a professor at McGill in 1963.

In 1965, working with his doctoral student Phil Gold, he identified a protein present in tumours of the colon and in fetal digestive tissue but absent from healthy adult colon. They named it carcinoembryonic antigen. Their paper, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine in March 1965, led to the CEA blood test, the first cancer marker to be used widely in clinical practice and still one of the standard tools for following colorectal cancer and detecting recurrence after surgery. Freedman and Gold also co-wrote the textbook Clinical Immunology.

Freedman then turned increasingly to academic leadership. He was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at McGill from 1977 to 1981, a period in which the Prix du Québec citation says the faculty rose to rank among the best in the world. From 1981 to 1991 he was McGill's Vice-Principal, Academic. He directed the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at the Jewish General Hospital from 1991 to 2000 and was senior adviser to the hospital until 1 January 2008. He also sat on the boards of the research institutes of the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Montreal Children's Hospital and of the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec.

Freedman was married to Norah Freedman, née Maizel, for 71 years. They had three children, David, Daniel and Liz, as well as grandchildren and great grandchildren. Through his wife he was the brother in law of the late Senator E. Leo Kolber. His family remembered him as soft-spoken and modest but clear about where he stood, a man who was not demonstrative but was utterly devoted to his family.

Samuel Freedman died peacefully in Montreal on Tuesday 10 November 2026, at the age of 98. His funeral was held at Paperman and Sons on Friday 13 November 2026, followed by burial at the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery. The family asked that contributions in his memory be made to the Jewish General Hospital Foundation.

The discovery of CEA is counted among the landmark achievements in McGill's history and opened the modern field of tumour markers. For more than sixty years the CEA test has helped doctors assess the spread of cancer and check for its return. As dean, vice-principal and research director, Freedman also shaped Montreal's medical research institutions and the careers of many scientists.