One of Canada’s foremost medical biophysicists
Working with Dr. Harold Johns, Sylvia Fedoruk served on a team of scientists involved in the development of one of the world's first cobalt-60 unit (the “Cobalt Bomb”), and one of the first nuclear medicine scanning machines, which pioneered the curative treatment of cancer using high intensity radioactive cobalt in humans. In time, she became chief medical physicist for the Saskatchewan Cancer Foundation.
Later in her career, Sylvia Fedoruk contributed to the development of the Dosimeter, allowing doctors to control the amount of radiation that each cancer patient received. She also participated in the development of one of the first whole body scanning machines that used radioactive nuclides to help detect cancers of the thyroid and liver.