Peter Brian Medawar

Born Feb. 28, 1915, in Rio de Janeiro. English biologist. Member of the Royal Society of London (1949); honorary member of the New York Academy of Sciences (1957).

Medawar graduated from Magdalen College at Oxford in 1939 and taught there from 1938 to 1945 and from 1946 to 1947. He was professor of zoology at the University of Birmingham from 1947 to 1951 and of zoology and comparative anatomy at University College in London in 1951. From 1962 to 1971 he was director of the National Institute for Medical Research (Mill Hill). In 1966 he became president of the international Transplantation Society. Medawar’s works have been devoted to the growth and aging of the body and its reactions to the transplantation of tissues, in particular immune reactions that hinder heterotransplantation, transplantation antigens, and antilymphocytic serums. He discovered the phenomenon of acquired immunotolerance and reproduced it experimentally. He won the Nobel Prize in 1960 (with F. Burnet). He is a member of a number of scientific societies in Great Britain and the USA.