Joseph Risi, the principal force behind the rise of university research laboratories in French Canada, was born March 13, 1899, in Ennetbürgen, near Lucerne, Switzerland, to Alois and Marie Rothenfluh Risi. His father was a cabinetmaker. The exacting and slow nature of his father's trade persuaded Joseph Risi to find another path in life. He decided on teaching. After completing his secondary education at the Collège St.-Michel in Zug, in 1918, he enrolled in the Catholic University of Fribourg, which had received university status only in 1909. He first finished the four diplomas ( licences ) then required of Swiss science teachers--in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. He stayed on for a doctorate in organic chemistry, which he completed in 1925 under the direction of A. Bistrzycki.

For the preceding five years, the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Laval University, in Quebec City, had been trying to establish an advanced school of...