Profile

About Me:

Sir Peter Brian Medawar was a Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose work led to transplants being possible. But he didn’t stop there, he also wrote insightful books about life inside the lab and would happily argue with a criticise any idea or work he took issue with. For example, he felt the idea of I.Q. was too simplistic, something which lots of research now backs up. He also studied and published perceptively on ageing, something that is still poorly understood.

He married his wife, Jean Shinglewood Taylor, at 22 and they remained together until Medawar died in 1987. They had two daughters Caroline and Louise, and two sons, Charles and Alexander. Lots of people remarked that Medawar was extremely witty and he even made a joke after he had a stroke in the middle of giving a lecture that it was “monstrous bad luck” as the stroke came too early for him to benefit from beta-blockers, a type of treatment that became widely used a few years after his stroke.

In his spare time Medawar loved to follow philosophy, cricket and opera, but he really was a scientist at heart. He considered doing experiments to be nothing more than ‘messing about’, but also really cared about other people. He wanted as many people as possible to know about science and research so that they could get involved and was first inspired to work on skin grafts after seeing soldiers injured during the Second World War. He is quoted as saying: “A scientist who wants to do something original and important must experience, as I did, some kind of shock that forces upon his intention the kind of problem that it should be his duty and will become his pleasure to investigate.”. The shock he mentions is seeking young soldiers after a plane crash.