John Sulston
Sir John Edward Sulston CH FRS MAE (27 March 1942 – 6 March 2018[12][13]) was a British biologist and academic who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cell lineage and genome of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans in 2002 with his colleagues Sydney Brenner and Robert Horvitz at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.[14] He was a leader in human genome research and Chair of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester.[15][16][17] Sulston was in favour of science in the public interest, such as free public access of scientific information and against the patenting of genes and the privatisation of genetic technologies.[18]
John Sulston
6 March 2018 (aged 75)
University of Cambridge (BA, PhD)
1 son, 1 daughter[6]
- W. Alden Spencer Award (1986)
- EMBO Membership (1989)[1]
- Darwin Medal (1996)[2]
- Beadle Award (2000)[3]
- Knight Bachelor (2001)
- Edinburgh Medal (2001)
- Physiological Society Annual Review Prize Lecture (2002)
- Nobel prize (2002)
- Gairdner Award (2002)
Early life and education[edit]
Sulston was born in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, England[19] to Arthur Edward Aubrey Sulston and Josephine Muriel Frearson, née Blocksidge.[6][20] His father was an Anglican priest and administrator of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. His mother quit her job as an English teacher at Watford Grammar School, to care for him and his sister Madeleine.[21] and home-tutored them until he was five. At age five he entered the local preparatory school, York House School, where he soon developed an aversion to games. He developed an early interest in science, having fun with dissecting animals and sectioning plants to observe their structure and function.[5] Sulston won a scholarship to Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood[6] and then to Pembroke College, Cambridge graduating in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts[6] degree in Natural Sciences (Chemistry). He joined the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, after being interviewed by Alexander Todd[5][22] and was awarded his PhD in 1966 for research in nucleotide chemistry.[4]