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Sydney Brenner - The decision to join the Cavendish Laboratory (82/236)

359 views · Published 5 July 2017 · 1:16 · Indexed 18 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To hear more of Sydney Brenner’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf13v0OEdt8&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFyxf1sRqxZgh-06WFw4zgPj

South African Sydney Brenner (1927-2019), who jointly discovered messenger RNA, was a pioneer in the field of genetics and molecular biology. He was one of three co-recipients of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. [Listener: Lewis Wolpert; date recorded: 1994]

TRANSCRIPT: So I returned to South Africa in December of that year – it's '54 – with the idea that I would start to work on the genetics of cofactor requirement in order to prepare the way for a full gene protein analysis, and that is something that I could do in South Africa. And so I was extremely depressed when I left America, because at that time I thought: I'll never see it again. You know, that was the end of the… the end of everything. But of course there were already conversations, when I came back to South Africa on the way I went to England, and there I talked to Francis, and there… there we had this discussion on degenerate coding and templates, and there we had the idea that I would come to join them in the Cavendish because we were talking the same language. However, I had to go back to serve my bondage, and all the wheels would be done to try and bring me back as… as soon as possible.

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