My Life in Science

Sydney Brenner was born in Germiston, South Africa on January 13, 1927. He studied medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. After finishing medical school in 1951, he won a scholarship to Oxford to work on bacteriophages, the viruses that attack bacteria. A few years later, he took a post at the Medical Research Council show more Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge and stayed there for 20 years. Brenner helped determine the nature of the genetic code by conducting a series of experiments in which he altered the DNA of a virus that attacks bacteria. He shared a Nobel Prize with John Sulston and H. Robert Horvitz in 2002 for developing a tiny transparent worm into a test bed for biological discoveries. Brenner also received the Lasker Award in medical science in 1971. From 1994 to 2000 he wrote an opinion column for the journal Current Biology. His autobiography, My Life in Science, was published in 2001. He died on April 5, 2019 at the age of 92. (Bowker Author Biography) show less