Aziz Sancar

Aziz Sancar was born in 1946 in Savur, Mardin, Turkey. Aziz Sancar's background is described as Turkish; from southeastern Anatolia. Growing up, the family was working class — lower-middle-class household; his parents were illiterate but prioritized their children's education. 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

1. 1963 · age 17
   Istanbul Faculty of Medicine

   Top of his class; turns down a goalkeeping trial for Turkey's junior national team to study.

2. 1969 · age 22
   Rural physician in Savur

   Returns to practice medicine in his hometown for two years.

3. 1973 · age 27
   PhD in Dallas

   Joins Claud Rupert's lab to study photolyase, the enzyme that repairs UV-damaged DNA.

4. 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.

5. 1982 · age 35
   UNC Chapel Hill

   Faculty post; maps nucleotide excision repair over the following decades.

6. 2005 · age 58
   National Academy of Sciences
7. 2015 · age 69
   Nobel Prize in Chemistry

   Shared with Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.

8. 2016 · age 69
   Donates the medal to Anıtkabir

   Presents his Nobel medal and certificate to Atatürk's mausoleum.