Science

Aziz Sancar

Seventh of eight children of illiterate parents in Savur; won the Nobel Prize for mapping DNA repair.

Born: 1946 · Savur, Mardin, Turkey
Roots: Turkish; from southeastern Anatolia
Family: Working class; Lower-middle-class household; his parents were illiterate but prioritized their children's education.
Education: Istanbul Faculty of Medicine → University of Texas at Dallas (PhD, molecular biology)
Started with: State schooling; Village school in Savur, then free medical training in Istanbul; practiced as a rural physician before the US doctorate.
Affiliations & societies: US National Academy of SciencesDocumented; Elected in 2005.; Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1963 · age 17
Istanbul Faculty of Medicine
Top of his class; turns down a goalkeeping trial for Turkey's junior national team to study.
1969 · age 22
Rural physician in Savur
Returns to practice medicine in his hometown for two years.
1973 · age 27
PhD in Dallas
Joins Claud Rupert's lab to study photolyase, the enzyme that repairs UV-damaged DNA.
1977 · age 31
Technician at Yale
By his account, his postdoctoral applications were rejected; he takes a technician position in a DNA-repair lab instead.
1982 · age 35
UNC Chapel Hill
Faculty post; maps nucleotide excision repair over the following decades.
2005 · age 58
National Academy of Sciences
2015 · age 69
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Shared with Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.
2016 · age 69
Donates the medal to Anıtkabir
Presents his Nobel medal and certificate to Atatürk's mausoleum.

Sources

Compiled from these references and contemporaneous press reporting. Figures are approximate; verify before relying on them.