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May 20, 2019 · Photo: OIST. Sydney Brenner was one of the most creative and influential biologists of the past seventy years, and also a unique and extraordinary person. He had an astonishing career, starting from the simplest beginnings: his father was an illiterate South African cobbler, and he learned to read from the newspapers that a neighbor used in ...
- Jonathan Hodgkin
- 2019
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Sydney Brenner was one of the first to view James Watson and Francis Crick’s double helix model of DNA in April 1953. The 26-year-old biologist from South Africa was then a graduate student at the University of Oxford, UK. So enthralled was he by the insights from the structure that he determined on the spot to devote his life to understanding genes.
Iconoclastic and provocative, he became one of the leading biologists of the twentieth century. Brenner shared in the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for deciphering the genetics of programmed cell death and animal development, including how the nervous system forms. He was at the forefront of the 1975 Asilomar meeting to discuss the appropriate use of emerging abilities to alter DNA, was a key proponent of the Human Genome Project, and much more. He died on 5 April.
Brenner was born in 1927 in Germiston, South Africa, to poor immigrant parents. Bored by school, he preferred to read books borrowed (sometimes permanently) from the public library, or to dabble with a self-assembled chemistry set. His extraordinary intellect — he was reading newspapers by the age of four — did not go unnoticed. His teachers secured an award from the town council to send him to medical school.
Brenner entered the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg at the age of 15 (alongside Aaron Klug, another science-giant-in-training). Here, certain faculty members, notably the anatomist Raymond Dart, and fellow research-oriented medical students enriched his interest in science. On finishing his six-year course, his youth legally precluded him from practising medicine, so he devoted two years to learning cell biology at the bench. His passion for research was such that he rarely set foot on the wards — and he initially failed his final examination in internal medicine.
In 1952 Brenner won a scholarship to the Department of Physical Chemistry at Oxford. His adviser, Cyril Hinshelwood, wanted to pursue the idea that the environment altered observable characteristics of bacteria. Brenner tried to convince him of the role of genetic mutation. Two years later, with doctorate in hand, Brenner spent the summer of 1954 in the United States visiting labs, including Cold Spring Harbor in New York state. Here he caught up with Watson and Crick again.
•Nature Medicine: My Life in Science by Sydney Brenner
•Life's code script
- Errol Friedberg
- 2019
May 17, 2019 · Pioneer of molecular biology and genetics. Sydney Brenner, an icon of science, died on 5 April at age 92. Sydney helped decipher the genetic code, he pioneered the use of Caenorhabditis elegans for genetic analysis, he made us think, and he made us laugh. Sydney was born in Germiston, South Africa, the son of Jewish immigrants.
- Cynthia Kenyon
- 2019
Current Biology. Developmental Cell. Immunity. Med. Molecular Cell. Neuron. Structure. American Journal of Human Genetics (partner) Biophysical Journal (partner)
Jun 6, 2019 · Sydney Brenner, one of the last living links with the golden age of molecular biology and one of the greatest biologists of the 20th century, has died, aged 92. Depending on your age and interests, Sydney was the man who co-discovered mRNA, or the man who wrote those hilarious “Loose Ends” columns in Current Biology, or the man who founded ...
Sep 2, 2020 · Abstract. From modest beginnings Sydney became an extraordinarily influential and accomplished molecular biologist. His critical knowledge of, and insights into, key scientific problems were legendary. His irrepressible personality, acerbic wit and ebullient talks inspired a generation of young biologists.
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May 18, 2019 · Sydney Brenner. Key player in the development of molecular biology and genetics. He was born in Germiston, South Africa, on Jan 13, 1927, and died in Singapore on April 5, 2019, aged 92 years. Nobel Prize winner, collaborator in beginning to decipher the genetic code, co-discoverer of messenger RNA, and much else.
