Photo: Holger Motzkau / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Aziz Sancar's story floors me. Born in the small village of Savur in Turkey's Mardin Province, he crossed the world to study in Texas and went on to map how cells repair their own damaged DNA, work that earned him the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The patience required to chase such an intricate mechanism, year after year at the bench, is staggering. As the first Turkish scientist to win a Nobel in the sciences, he carries real symbolic weight too. What I find most moving is the distance traveled, from rural Anatolia to the frontier of molecular biology, closed entirely by stubborn, careful experiment. I hold his work in deep respect.
Overview
Aziz Sancar (Turkish: [aˈziz ˈsandʒaɾ]; born 8 September 1946) is a Turkish-American molecular biologist specializing in DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoints, and circadian clock. In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Tomas Lindahl and Paul L. Modrich for their mechanistic studies of DNA repair.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Aziz Sancar
- Name (Japanese)
- アジズ・サンジャル
- Reading
- あじず・さんじゃる
- Born
- September 8, 1946 (age 79)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Virgo / Dog
- Origin
- Savur district, Mardin Province, Turkey
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- biochemist / molecular biologist / university teacher / geneticist / scientist
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- University of Texas at Dallas
Awards & achievements
- 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1984 Presidential Young Investigator Award
- 2016 Bert and Natalie Vallee Award in Biomedical Science
- honorary diploma of President of Azerbaijan Republic
- 2016 North Carolina Award for Public Service
- International Alisher Navoi Prize
- Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Biochemist — see all → · More people from Turkey →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.