AZİZ SANCAR

Aziz Sancar is a great Turkish scientist. He’s a biochemist and molecular biologist. He was born in Savur, Mardin in 1946. He grew up as one of the eight children of an impoverished family in a small town. He had his primary and secondary education near his hometown.

He started Istanbul School of Medicine in 1963, and he graduated from Istanbul University in 1969. Then he studied molecular biology at the University of Texas in the USA and completed his doctorate there in 1977. After that, he started his postdoctoral work at Yale University School of Medicine in 1977. He carried out studies on DNA repair there, and he became an associate professor. In 1982, he started to work at the University of North Carolina, where he currently serves as a professor of biochemistry and biophysics. 

Aziz Sancar got the North Carolina Distinguished Chemist Award in 2001. He was also the first Turkish scientist who became a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2005. And in 2006, he was elected to the Turkish Academy of Sciences. He established the Aziz and Gwen Sancar Foundation with his wife in 2007 to promote Turkish culture. He also founded Carolina Turkish House near the university campus to support Turkish students there. 

Professor Aziz Sancar got the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2015. He was awarded for his mechanistic studies of DNA repair. He says, “DNA repair is really important to protect the human body against cancer.”