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Peter Medawar
Sign in to saveAlso known as P.B. Medawar, P. B. Medawar, Sir Peter Medawar, Sir Peter Brian Medawar
English-brazilian biologist (1915–1987)
Peter Medawar was an English-Brazilian biologist who lived from 1915 to 1987 and made important contributions to the field of biology. His work helped advance our understanding of biological processes and earned him recognition as a significant scientific figure of the twentieth century.
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Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives
· 1999 · cited 84,919x
- A new method of classifying prognostic comorbidity in longitudinal studies: Development and validation
· 1987 · cited 42,223x
- QIIME allows analysis of high-throughput community sequencing data
· 2010 · cited 30,722x
- RoB 2: a revised tool for assessing risk of bias in randomised trials
· 2019 · cited 23,726x
- <i>PHENIX</i>: a comprehensive Python-based system for macromolecular structure solution
· 2010 · cited 23,303x
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Quotes
- “The bells which toll for mankind are—most of them, anyway—like the bells of Alpine cattle; they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound.”
- “The similarity between them is not the taxonomic key to some other, deeper, affinity, and our recognizing its existence marks the end, not the inauguration, of a train of thought.”
- “Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart.”
- “If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs.”
- “The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.”
- “The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.”
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Nobel Prize
- The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine1960
“for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance”
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Wikidata facts
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- Peter Brian Medawar.jpg
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- date of birth
- 1915-02-28
- date of death
- 1987-10-02
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- Peter Medawar
- name in native language
- Peter Brian Medawar
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Article
Sir Peter Brian Medawar OM CH CBE FRS (/ˈmɛdəwər/; 28 February 1915 – 2 October 1987) was a Brazilian-born biologist and writer of Lebanese-British descent who, from a succession of research and teaching posts (Oxford through the Royal Institution), and senior U.K. biomedical leadership positions (MRC and RPMC), contributed seminal discoveries in immunology, including one honored by a Nobel Prize to him and Australian Mac Burnet in 1960. Medawar's works on the discovery of acquired immune tolerance, and on graft rejection, have been fundamental to the medical practice of tissue and organ transplants. For his scientific work, he has been termed the "father of transplantation". He is remembered, as well, for his wit, both in person and in his popular writings. Richard Dawkins referred to him as "the wittiest of all scientific writers"; Stephen Jay Gould as "the cleverest man I have ever known".
Medawar was the child of a Lebanese father and a British mother, ther youngest child, and both a Brazilian and British citizen by birth. He prepared for university admission at a public secondary school, Marlborough College, about which he had ill feelings generally, but was positive with regard to his biology teacher, Ashley Gordon Lowndes. He then pursued his university training in zoology under John Young at Magdalen College, Oxford; after a scholarship and fellowship there, he went on to hold named professorial positions in zoology at the University of Birmingham and University College London. Until he was partially disabled by a cerebral infarction, he was Director of the National Institute for Medical Research (at Mill Hill).