Aziz Sancar

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.

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

Occupation

biochemist / molecular biologist / university teacher / geneticist / scientist

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

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttps://sancar.org/
• Xhttps://x.com/AzizGwenSancar
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%82%B8%E3%82%BA%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B5%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%AB

Tags

• Mardin Province
• biochemist
• molecular biologist
• university teacher

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.