Sydney Brenner
Sydney Brenner
Sydney Brenner CH FRS FMedSciis a South African biologist and a 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate, shared with Bob Horvitz and John Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research CouncilLaboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He established the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology, and founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California,...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth13 January 1927
In my final year I failed Medicine, scraped through Surgery but got a First Class in the third subject, Obstetrics and Gynecology.
I spent 20 years sharing an office with Francis Crick and many new and exciting ideas (both right and wrong) were generated from our conversations.
My parents would have preferred me to become a surgeon or a physician but were most understanding of the ambitions of their son.
The moment I saw the model and heard about the complementing base pairs I realized that it was the key to understanding all the problems in biology we had found intractable - it was the birth of molecular biology.
I went in with Jack and Leslie, into this room that was lined with brick, and there on the side I can remember very clearly was this small model with plates for the bases - the original model with everything screwed together.
Innovation comes only from an assault on the unknown.
Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order.
There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.