Sydney Brenner

Sydney Brenner was born on 13 January 1927 in Germiston, South Africa. He won the Nobel Prize alongside Horvitz and Sulston for discoveries in the ‘genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death’. A Carnegie Corporation Fellow in 1954, he joined the Medical Research Council Laboratory in Cambridge in 1956, serving as Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Director of the Unit of Molecular Genetics. Briefly at Scripps Research Institute in California, he founded the Molecular Sciences Institute at Berkeley in 1996. He retired as Distinguished Professor of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. 

Awarded the Royal Medal in 1974 and the Copley Medal in 1991, he was appointed Companion of Honour in 1987. In 1964, he founded the European Molecular Biology Organization and helped establish the Human Genome Organization to ensure the sequencing of human chromosomes. Brenner wrote a column called ‘Loose Ends’ for Current Biology, and other works include Molecular Biology: A Selection of Papers (1989) and My Life in Science (2001), posthumously published. He was co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Genetics.