University of Toronto

Founded 1827. Canada's top research university, where insulin was discovered.

Overview

Chartered as King's College, the university renamed itself in 1850 and secularized. Banting and Best isolated insulin in 1921 in a medical building laboratory, launching a diabetes therapy that has saved millions. The first operational electron microscope in the Americas was built here, and the vector institute later anchored deep learning's rise with Geoffrey Hinton on faculty. Seven undergraduate colleges give the downtown campus an Oxford-flavored scaffold. Toronto enrolls about 90,000 students across two campuses and claims 12 Nobel affiliates.