Sir Peter Brian MedawarOMCHCBEFRS (/ˈmɛdəwər/; 28 February 1915 – 2 October 1987)[1] was a British biologist and writer, whose works ongraft rejection and the discovery ofacquired immune tolerance have been fundamental to the medical practice of tissue andorgan transplants. For his scientific works, he is regarded as the "father of transplantation".[4] He is remembered for his wit both in person and in popular writings.Richard Dawkins referred to him as "the wittiest of all scientific writers";[5]Stephen Jay Gould as "the cleverest man I have ever known".[6]
Medawar was born inPetrópolis, a town 40 miles north ofRio de Janeiro, Brazil, where his parents were living. He was the third child ofLebanese Nicholas Agnatius Medawar, born in the village ofJounieh, north ofBeirut,Lebanon, and British mother Edith Muriel (née Dowling).[8][9] He had a brother Philip and a sister Pamela. (Pamela was later married to SirDavid Hunt,[10] who served as Private Secretary to prime ministersClement Attlee andWinston Churchill.[11]) His father, aChristian Maronite, became a naturalised British citizen and worked for a British dental supplies manufacturer that sent him to Brazil as an agent.[9] (He later described his father's profession as selling "false teeth in South America".[12]) His status as a British citizen was acquired at birth, as he said, "My birth was registered at the BritishConsulate in good time to acquire the status of 'natural-born British subject'."[8]
Medawar left Brazil with his family for England at the end ofWorld War I,[13] in 1918[14][15] and he lived there for the rest of his life. According to other accounts, he moved to England when he was 13 (i.e., 1928–1929)[10] or 14 (i.e., 1929–1930).[16] He was also a Brazilian citizen by birth, as dictated by theBrazilian nationality law (jus soli). At 18 years, when he was of age to be drafted in the Brazilian Army,[17] he applied for exemption ofmilitary conscription toJoaquim Pedro Salgado Filho, his godfather and the then Minister of Aviation. His application was denied by GeneralEurico Gaspar Dutra, and he had to renounce his Brazilian citizenship.[10][18]
In 1928, Medawar went toMarlborough College in Marlborough, Wiltshire.[9] He hated the college because "they were critical and querulous at the same time, wondering what kind of person a Lebanese was—something foreign you can be sure",[19] and also because of its preference for sports, in which he was weak.[9] An experience of bullying and racism made him feel the rest of his life "resentful and disgusted at the manners and mores of [Marlborough's] essentially tribal institution," and likened it to the training schools for the Nazi SS as all "founded upon the twin pillars of sex and sadism." His proudest moments at the college were with his teacherAshley Gordon Lowndes, to whom he credited the beginning of his career in biology.[20] He recognised Lowndes as barely literate but "a very, very good biology teacher".[19] Lowndes had taught eminent biologists includingJohn Z. Young and Richard Julius Pumphrey.[21] Yet Medawar was inherently weak in dissection and was constantly irked by their dictum: "Bloody foolish is the boy whose drawing of his dissection differs in any way whatsoever from the diagram in the textbook."[20]
In 1932, he went on toMagdalen College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class honours degree in zoology in 1935.[9] Medawar was appointed Christopher Welch scholar and seniordemy of Magdalen in 1935. He also worked at theSir William Dunn School of Pathology supervised byHoward Florey (later Nobel laureate, and who inspired him to take up immunology) and completed his doctoral thesis in 1941.[22] In 1938, he became Fellow of Magdalen through an examination, the position he held until 1944. It was there that he started working with J. Z. Young on the regeneration of nerves. His invention of a nerve glue proved useful in surgical operations of severed nerves during World War II.[21]
TheUniversity of Oxford approved hisDoctor of Philosophy thesis titled "Growth promoting and growth inhibiting factors in normal and abnormal development" in 1941,[22] but because of the prohibitive cost of supplication (the process by which the degree is officially conferred), he spent the money on his urgentappendicectomy instead.[12] The University of Oxford later awarded him aDoctor of Science degree in 1947.[23]
After completing his PhD, Medawar was appointed a Rolleston Prizeman in 1942, seniorresearch fellow ofSt John's College, Oxford, in 1944, and a university demonstrator in zoology and comparative anatomy, also in 1944.[24] He was re-electedfellow of Magdalen from 1946 to 1947. In 1947, he became Mason Professor of Zoology at theUniversity of Birmingham and worked there until 1951. He transferred toUniversity College London in 1951 as Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy.[1]
In 1962, he was appointed director of theNational Institute for Medical Research. His predecessor SirCharles Harrington was an able administrator such that taking over his post was, as he described, "[N]o more strenuous than ... sliding over into the driving-seat of a Rolls-Royce".[25] He was head of the transplantation section of theMedical Research Council's clinical research centre at Harrow from 1971 to 1986. He became professor of experimental medicine at theRoyal Institution (1977–1983), and president of theRoyal Postgraduate Medical School (1981–1987).[23]
Medawar's first scientific research was on the effect ofmalt on the development of connective tissue cells (mesenchyme) in chicken. Reading the draft of the manuscript, Howard Florey commented that it was more philosophical than scientific.[24] It was published in theQuarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology in 1937.[26]
Medawar's involvement with what becametransplant research began during World War II, when he investigated possible improvements inskin grafts.[22] His first publication on the subject was "Sheets of Pure Epidermal Epithelium from Human Skin", which was published inNature in 1941.[27] His studies particularly concerned solution for skin wounds among soldiers in the war.[28][29] In 1947, he moved to the University of Birmingham, taking along with him his PhD student Leslie Brent and postdoctoral fellow Rupert Billingham. His research became more focused in 1949, when Australian biologistFrank Macfarlane Burnet, at theWalter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, advanced the hypothesis that duringembryonic life and immediately after birth,cells gradually acquire the ability to distinguish between their owntissue substances on the one hand and unwanted cells and foreign material on the other.[3]
With Billingham, he published a seminal paper in 1951 on grafting technique.[30]Santa J. Ono, the American immunologist, has described the enduring impact of this paper to modern science.[31] Based on this technique of grafting, Medawar's team devised a method to test Burnet's hypothesis. They extracted cells from young mouse embryos and injected them into another mouse of different strains. When the mouse developed into adult and skin grafting from that of the original strain was performed, there was notissue rejection. The mouse had tolerated the foreign tissue, which would normally be rejected. Their experimental proof of Burnet's hypothesis was first published in a brief article inNature in 1953,[32] followed by a series of papers, and a comprehensive description inPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B in 1956, giving the name "actively acquired tolerance".[33]
Medawar was awarded hisNobel Prize in 1960 withBurnet for their work in tissue grafting which is the basis oforgan transplants, and their discovery of acquired immunological tolerance. This work was used in dealing withskin grafts required afterburns. Medawar's work resulted in a shift of emphasis in the science ofimmunology from one that attempts to deal with the fully developed immunity mechanism to one that attempts to alter the immunity mechanism itself, as in the attempt to suppress the body'srejection of organ transplants.[34][35] It directly laid the foundation for the first successful organ transplantation in humans, specificallykidney transplantation, carried out by an American physicianJoseph Murray, who eventually received the 1990Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.[36]
Medawar's 1951 lecture "An Unsolved Problem of Biology" (published 1952[37]) addressed ageing andsenescence, and he begins by defining both terms as follows:
We obviously need a word for mere ageing, and I propose to use 'ageing' itself for just that purpose. 'Ageing' hereafter stands for mere ageing, and has no other innuendo. I shall use the word 'senescence' to mean ageing accompanied by that decline of bodily faculties and sensibilities and energies which ageing colloquially entails.
He then tackles the question of why evolution has permitted organisms to senesce, even though (1) senescence lowers individual fitness, and (2) there is no obvious necessity for senescence. In answering this question, Medawar provides two fundamental and interrelated insights. First, there is an inexorable decline in probability of an organism's existence, and, therefore, in what he terms "reproductive value." He suggests that it therefore follows that the force ofnatural selection weakens progressively with age late in life (because thefecundity of younger age-groups is overwhelmingly more significant in producing the next generation). What happens to an organism after reproduction is only weakly reflected in natural selection by the effect on its younger relatives. He pointed out that likelihood of death at various times of life, as judged bylife tables, was an indirect measure offitness, that is, the capacity of an organism to propagate its genes. Life tables for humans show, for example that the lowest likelihood of death in human females comes at about age 14, which in primitive societies would likely be an age of peak reproduction. This has served as the basis for all three modern theories for theevolution of senescence.[38][39][40]
Medawar presented a talk onviviparity in animals (the phenomenon by which some animals give live birth) at a meeting on evolution at Oxford in July 1952.[41] Later published in 1953, he introduced an aphorism:
Endocrine evolution is not an evolution of hormones but an evolution of the uses to which they are put; an evolution not, to put it crudely, of chemical formulae but of reactivities, reaction patterns and tissue competences.[42][43]
The notion that evolution and diversity of endocrine function in animals are due to different uses of each hormone rather than different hormones themselves became an established fact.[44] The paper is also regarded as a pioneer in the field ofreproductive immunology.[45]
Medawar never knew the exact meaning of his surname, anArabic word, he was told, for "to make round"; but which a friend explained to him as "little round fat man".[8]
Medawar marriedJean Shinglewood Taylor on 27 February 1937. They met while in graduate class at Oxford, he at Magdalen and Taylor atSomerville College. Taylor approached him for the meaning of "heuristic", which she had to ask twice, and he had to finally offer lessons in philosophy. Medawar described her as "the most beautiful woman in Oxford"; but Taylor's impression was he looked "mildly diabolical." Taylor's family objected to their marriage as Medawar had "no background, and no money." Her mother was explicitly afraid of having "black" grandchildren; her aunt disinherited her. The couple had two sons, Charles and Alexander, and two daughters, Caroline and Louise.[46]
Medawar was interested in a wide range of subjects includingopera,philosophy andcricket. He was exceptionally tall, 6 ft 5 inches (196 cm), physically robust, with a big voice noted particularly during his lectures. He was renowned for wit and humour, which he claimed he inherited from his "raucous" mother. As he completed his PhD research in 1941, he did not receive the degree as he could not afford the requisite £25, to which he commented:
I'm an impostor. I am a doctor, but not a PhD... Morally I'm a PhD, in the sense I could have had one if I'd been able to afford it. Anyway it was unfashionable in my day. John Young [probably referring toJohn Zachary Young] was not a PhD either. A PhD was regarded then as a newfangled German importation, as bizarre and undesirable as having German bands playing on streetcorners.[8]
He was regarded as the philosopherKarl Popper's best-known disciple in science.[47]
Medawar was the maternal grandfather of the screenwriter and directorAlex Garland.[48]
... I believe that a reasonable case can be made for saying, not that we believe in God because He exists but rather that He exists because we believe in Him... Considered as an element of the world, God has the same degree and kind of objective reality as do other products of mind... I regret my disbelief in God and religious answers generally, for I believe it would give satisfaction and comfort to many in need of it if it were possible to discover and propound good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in God... To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive... I am a rationalist—something of a period piece nowadays, I admit...[49]
Although he normally sympathised with Christianity especially on moral teachings, he found the Biblical stories unethical and was "shocked by the way in which [Biblical] characters deceived and defrauded each other." He even asked his wife "to make sure that such a book did not fall into the hands of [their] children."[50]
Nonetheless, he also said the following, which suggests that although religion has good value for humans in aggregate, it does not help them all equally:
Religion has not sustained me on any of the occasions when the comfort it professes would have been most welcome.[12]
In 1959 Medawar was invited by the BBC to present the broadcaster's annualReith Lectures—following in the footsteps of his colleague, J. Z. Young, who was Reith Lecturer in 1950. For his own series of six radio broadcasts, titledThe Future of Man,[51] Medawar examined how the human race might continue to evolve.
While attending the annualBritish Association meeting in 1969, Medawar suffered astroke when reading the lesson atExeter Cathedral, a duty which falls on every new President of theBritish Association. It was, as he said, "monstrous bad luck becauseJim Whyte Black had not yet devisedbeta-blockers, which slow the heart-beat and could have preserved my health and my career".[52] Medawar's failing health may have had repercussions for medical science and the relations between the scientific community and government. Before the stroke, Medawar was one of Britain's most influential scientists, especially in the biomedical field.
After the impairment of his speech and movement, Medawar, with his wife's help, reorganised his life and continued to write and do research though on a greatly restricted scale. However, he suffered further strokes and in 1987 he died in theRoyal Free Hospital, London. He is interred with his wife Jean (1913–2005) in the graveyard ofSt Andrew's Church in Alfriston in East Sussex.[53][54]
Medawar was elected President of the Royal Society for the term 1970–1975, but a severe stroke in 1969 prohibited him from taking up the office.[59]
Medawar was awarded the 1987Michael Faraday Prize "for the contribution his books had made in presenting to the public, and to scientists themselves, the intellectual nature and the essential humanity of pursuing science at the highest level and the part it played in our modern culture".[60]
Peter Brian Medawar Medal, awarded by the State Medical Academy of Rio de Janeiro.[10]
The University of Oxford has established a research consortium named the Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research.[64]
The Department of Science and Technology Studies of the University College London has STS Peter Medawar Prize for undergraduate students.[65]
The University of Birmingham Public Engagement with Research (PER) Team established an annual Light of Understanding Award to individuals and groups who accomplished public engagement with research work.[66]
Medawar was recognised as a brilliant author.Richard Dawkins called him "the wittiest of all scientific writers",[5] andNew Scientist magazine's obituary called him "perhaps the best science writer of his generation".[67]
One of his best-known essays is his 1961 criticism ofPierre Teilhard de Chardin'sThe Phenomenon of Man, of which he said: "Its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself".[68][69]
His books include
The Uniqueness of the Individual, which includes essays on immunology, graft rejection and acquired immune tolerance. Basic Books, New York, 1957
The Future of Man: the BBCReith Lectures 1959, Methuen, London, 1960
The Art of the Soluble, Methuen & Co., London/ Barnes and Noble, New York, 1967
Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought, American Philosophical Society. Philadelphia/Methuen & Co., London, 1969
The Life Science, Harper & Row, 1978
Advice to a Young Scientist, Harper & Row, 1979
Pluto's Republic, incorporating an earlier bookThe Art of the Soluble, Oxford University Press, 1982
The Limits of Science, Oxford University Press, 1988
The Hope of Progress: A Scientist looks at Problems in Philosophy, Literature and Science, Anchor Press / Doubleday, Garden City, 1973
Memoirs of a Thinking Radish: An Autobiography, Oxford University Press, 1986
The Threat and the Glory: Reflections on Science and Scientists (ed.: David Pyke), a posthumously collected volume of essays, HarperCollins, 1990
Apart from his books on science and philosophy, he wrote a short feature article on "Some Meistersinger Records" in the issue ofThe Gramophone for November 1930. The author was a P. B. Medawar. The evidence that this was indeed the future Sir Peter Medawar—then a schoolboy of 15—was discussed in "Gramophone" in 1995 ("'Gramophone',Die Meistersinger and immunology", by John E. Havard, December 1995).
^Park, Hyung Wook (2010). "'The shape of the human being as a function of time': time, transplantation, and tolerance in Peter Brian Medawar's research, 1937–1956".Endeavour.34 (3):112–121.doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2010.07.002.hdl:10220/9942.PMID20692038.
^Medawar, P.B. (1953). "Some immunological and endocrinological problems raised by the evolution of viviparity in vertebrates".Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology.7:320–338.
^Venter, J; Diporzio, U; Robinson, D; Shreeve, S; Lai, J; Kerlavage, A; Fracekjr, S; Lentes, K; Fraser, C (1988). "Evolution of neurotransmitter receptor systems".Progress in Neurobiology.30 (2–3):105–169.doi:10.1016/0301-0082(88)90004-4.PMID2830635.S2CID42118786.
^Renfree, Marilyn B. (1994), "Endocrinology of Pregnancy, Parturition and Lactation in Marsupials", in Lamming, G. E. (ed.),Marshall's Physiology of Reproduction, Springer Netherlands, pp. 677–766,doi:10.1007/978-94-011-1286-4_7,ISBN978-94-010-4561-2
Billington, W. David (October 2003). "The immunological problem of pregnancy: 50 years with the hope of progress. A tribute to Peter Medawar".J. Reprod. Immunol.60 (1):1–11.doi:10.1016/S0165-0378(03)00083-4.PMID14568673.
Taylor, R. M. R. (April 1989). "Articles based on presentations at the Sir Peter Medawar Memorial Symposium. London, 5 December and 6th, 1988".Immunol. Lett.21 (1): 3.doi:10.1016/0165-2478(89)90002-3.PMID2656507.
Monaco, A P (February 1989). "The legacy of Sir Peter Medawar".Transplant. Proc.21 (1 Pt 1):1–4.PMID2650059.
Lawrence, H. (August 1981). "Advances in immunology: a meeting in honor of Sir Peter Medawar".Cell. Immunol.62 (2):233–310.doi:10.1016/0008-8749(81)90318-X.PMID7026051.
Guntrip, H. (September 1978). "Psychoanalysis and some scientific and philosophical critics: (Dr Eliot Slater, Sir Peter Medawar and Sir Karl Popper)".The British Journal of Medical Psychology.51 (3):207–24.doi:10.1111/j.2044-8341.1978.tb02466.x.PMID356870.
Kenéz, J. (April 1975). "Medawar and organ transplantation".Orvosi Hetilap.116 (16):931–34.PMID1090878.
Sulek, K. (March 1969). "Nobel prize for F. M. Burnett and P. B. Medawar in 1960 for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance".Wiad. Lek.22 (5):505–06.PMID4892417.
"Sir Peter Brian Medawar".Triangle; the Sandoz Journal of Medical Science.9 (2):79–80. 1969.PMID4939701.
