29 Facts About Aziz Sancar

1.

Aziz Sancar was born on 8September 1946 and is a Turkish molecular biologist specializing in DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoints, and circadian clock.

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2.

Aziz Sancar has made contributions on photolyase and nucleotide excision repair in bacteria that have changed his field.

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3.

Aziz Sancar is currently the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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4.

Aziz Sancar was born on 8 September 1946 to a lower-middle-class family in the Savur district of Mardin Province, southeastern Turkey.

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5.

Aziz Sancar's oldest brother Kenan Sancar is a retired brigadier general in the Turkish Armed Forces.

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6.

Aziz Sancar is the second cousin of the politician Mithat Sancar, who is a member of parliament from and chairman of HDP.

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7.

Aziz Sancar's parents were uneducated; however, they put great emphasis on his education.

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8.

Aziz Sancar was educated by idealistic teachers who received their education in the Village Institutes, he later stated that this was a great inspiration to him.

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9.

Aziz Sancar wanted to study chemistry whilst at high school, but was persuaded to study medicine after five of his classmates got into medicine along with him.

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10.

Aziz Sancar received his primary education near his hometown of Savur.

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11.

Aziz Sancar then completed his MD degree in Istanbul University of Turkey in 1969 and completed his PhD degree on the photoreactivating enzyme of E coli in 1977 at the University of Texas at Dallas in the laboratory of Claud Stan Rupert, now Professor Emeritus.

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12.

Aziz Sancar is an honorary member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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13.

Aziz Sancar then won a scholarship from TUBITAK to pursue further education in biochemistry at Johns Hopkins University, but returned to Savur in 1973 as a doctor after spending 1.

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14.

Aziz Sancar only spoke French when he arrived in the US but learned English during his education at Johns Hopkins.

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15.

Aziz Sancar was accepted and completed his PhD in molecular biology there.

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16.

Aziz Sancar's interest had been stimulated by the recovery of bacteria, which had been exposed to deadly amounts of ultraviolet radiation, upon their illumination with blue light.

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17.

Aziz Sancar has stated that his accent of English was detrimental to his career as a lecturer.

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18.

At Chapel Hill, Aziz Sancar discovered the following steps of nucleotide excision repair in bacteria and worked on the more complex version of this repair mechanism in humans.

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19.

Aziz Sancar was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005 as the first Turkish-American member.

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20.

Aziz Sancar is the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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21.

Aziz Sancar is married to Gwen Boles Sancar, who graduated the same year and who is a professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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22.

Aziz Sancar is married to Gwen Boles Aziz Sancar, with whom he met during his PhD in Dallas, where she was studying molecular biology.

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23.

Aziz Sancar said he was "disturbed by some of the questions he received, " particularly by questions about his ethnic background.

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24.

Aziz Sancar said that his brother's Nobel Prize was an honor for all of Turkey, including the Kurds.

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25.

Aziz Sancar was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Tomas Lindahl and Paul L Modrich for their mechanistic studies of DNA repair.

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26.

Aziz Sancar was granted Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in Molecular Biophysics in 1984.

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27.

Aziz Sancar is the second Turkish Nobel laureate after Orhan Pamuk, who is an alumnus of Istanbul University.

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28.

Aziz Sancar donated his original Nobel Prize golden medal and certificate to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with a presidential ceremony on 19 May 2016, which is the 97th anniversary of Ataturk initiating the Turkish War of Independence.

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29.

Aziz Sancar delivered a replica of his Nobel medal and certificate to Istanbul University, from which he earned his MD.

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