34 Facts About Peter Medawar

Peter Medawar is remembered for his wit both in person and in popular writings.

Peter Medawar studied at Marlborough College and Magdalen College, Oxford, and was professor of zoology at the University of Birmingham and University College London.

Peter Medawar was born in Petropolis, a town 40 miles north of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where his parents were living.

Peter Medawar was the third child of Lebanese Nicholas Agnatius Medawar, born in the village of Jounieh, north of Beirut, Lebanon, and British mother Edith Muriel.

Peter Medawar had a brother Philip and a sister Pamela.

Peter Medawar left Brazil with his family for England at the end of World War I, in 1918 and he lived there for the rest of his life.

Peter Medawar was a Brazilian citizen by birth, as dictated by the Brazilian nationality law.

Peter Medawar's application was denied by General Eurico Gaspar Dutra, and he had to renounce his Brazilian citizenship.

In 1928, Peter Medawar went to Marlborough College in Marlborough, Wiltshire.

Peter Medawar recognised Lowndes as barely literate but "a very, very good biology teacher".

Peter Medawar was appointed Christopher Welch scholar and senior demy of Magdalen in 1935.

Peter Medawar worked at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology supervised by Howard Florey and completed his doctoral thesis in 1941.

Peter Medawar was re-elected fellow of Magdalen from 1946 to 1947.

Peter Medawar transferred to University College London in 1951 as Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy.

Peter Medawar was head of the transplantation section of the Medical Research Council's clinical research centre at Harrow from 1971 to 1986.

Peter Medawar became professor of experimental medicine at the Royal Institution, and president of the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.

Peter Medawar's research became more focused in 1949, when Australian biologist Frank Macfarlane Burnet, at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, advanced the hypothesis that during embryonic life and immediately after birth, cells gradually acquire the ability to distinguish between their own tissue substances on the one hand and unwanted cells and foreign material on the other.

Peter Medawar was awarded his Nobel Prize in 1960 with Burnet for their work in tissue grafting which is the basis of organ transplants, and their discovery of acquired immunological tolerance.

Peter Medawar's work resulted in a shift of emphasis in the science of immunology from one that attempts to deal with the fully developed immunity mechanism to one that attempts to alter the immunity mechanism itself, as in the attempt to suppress the body's rejection of organ transplants.

Peter Medawar pointed out that likelihood of death at various times of life, as judged by life tables, was an indirect measure of fitness, that is, the capacity of an organism to propagate its genes.

Peter Medawar presented a talk on viviparity in animals at a meeting on evolution at Oxford in July 1952.

Peter Medawar never knew the exact meaning of his surname, an Arabic word, he was told, for "to make round"; but which a friend explained to him as "little round fat man".

Peter Medawar was interested in a wide range of subjects including opera, philosophy and cricket.

Peter Medawar was renowned for wit and humour, which he claimed he inherited from his "raucous" mother.

Peter Medawar was regarded as the philosopher Karl Popper's best-known disciple in science.

Peter Medawar was the maternal grandfather of the screenwriter and director Alex Garland.

Peter Medawar is interred with his wife Jean in the graveyard of St Andrew's Church in Alfriston in East Sussex.

Peter Medawar was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1949.

Peter Medawar was elected an EMBO Member in 1964 and received the Royal Medal in 1959, and the Copley Medal in 1969 both from the Royal Society.

Peter Medawar was awarded the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science in 1985.

Peter Medawar was awarded a Honorary Doctor of Science Degree in 1961 by the University of Birmingham.

Peter Medawar was elected a member of the American Society of Immunologists in 1971, and elected foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959, the American Philosophical Society in 1961, and the US National Academy of Sciences in 1965.

Peter Medawar was awarded the 1987 Michael Faraday Prize "for the contribution his books had made in presenting to the public, and to scientists themselves, the intellectual nature and the essential humanity of pursuing science at the highest level and the part it played in our modern culture".

The University of Oxford has established a research consortium named the Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research.