Happy Birthday, Sir William Osler

Former Faculty President and medical luminary, Sir William Osler, MD, was born on this day, 172 years ago in rural Bond Head, Ontario, Canada. 

In 1916, at a lecture on his birthday in Oxford, England, given to that year’s contingent of Rhodes Scholars, Sir William reflected on a toss of the coin which changed the course of his life in several ways.

In Philadelphia, he met the woman who would eventually become his wife, Grace Linzac Revere Gross, who was the widow of Dr. Samuel Gross, a professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College, his alma mater. Lady Grace was a descendant of Paul Revere, an American silversmith, and patriot.