Aziz SANCAR

Who is Aziz Sancar?

Prof. Dr. Aziz Sancar, born in Savur district of Mardin in 1946, is a Nobel Prize-winning physician, academic, biochemist and molecular biologist. In 1969, he graduated from Istanbul Faculty of Medicine. He then went to Dallas and received his PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Texas at Dallas. He completed his associate professorship in DNA repair at Yale University. Since 1997, he has been working at the University of North Carolina, USA.

Life of Aziz Sancar

Born on September 8, 1946 in Savur district of Mardin, the seventh of eight children of a middle-income farmer family, Aziz Sancar completed his basic education in Mardin. During his high school years, he wanted to be a soccer player. However, in his senior year, he gave up this ambition and went to Istanbul to continue his higher education.

Aziz Sancar, who completed his Master's and Doctorate degrees in the USA, is a citizen of Turkey and the United States of America.

Aziz Sancar, who is married to biochemistry professor Gwen Boles Sancar, established the Aziz & Gwen Sancar Foundation with his wife in order to help Turkish students studying in the USA and to improve Turkish-American relations, and opened a student guesthouse named "Carolina Turkish House" in North Carolina, USA.

In an interview, Sancar said that he worked 18 hours a day until the age of 40 and then reduced this to 12 hours a day.

Aziz Sancar Career

In 1963, he enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at Istanbul University and graduated in 1969 with top honors. After working as a doctor at a health center in Savur, his hometown, for two years, he received a NATO-TÜBİTAK Scholarship and went to Johns Hopkins University, one of the most prestigious medical education institutions in the USA, where he continued his research. Aziz Sancar returned to Turkey due to the adaptation problems he was experiencing, and after a while he went to the University of Texas at Dallas to complete his education.

He joined the university's molecular biology program in Dallas. With his advisor Claud Stanley Rupert, Sancar conducted a study called "photolyase" and discovered the use of a cloned gene to repair damaged DNA. With this discovery, he first received his master's degree and then his doctorate degree in 1977.

Aziz Sancar worked at Yale University School of Medicine between 1977 and 1982. During this period, he started research on nucleotide cut repair. He completed his associate professorship thesis in DNA repair. Since 1997, he has been conducting his research in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, which is known for its work in biochemistry and biophysics.

Aziz Sancar Awards & Achievements

Sancar, who continues to work on DNA repair, cell sequencing, cancer treatment and the biological clock, has published 415 scientific articles and 33 books to date. Sancar has received awards for his use of the circadian clock in cancer treatment.

In 2001, Sancar was awarded the North Carolina Distinguished Chemist Award by the American Chemical Society. In 2005, he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious memberships in the world of science, becoming the first Turkish scientist to be elected to this academy. In 2006, Sancar was elected as a full member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences.

Aziz Sancar has won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with American Paul Modrich and Swede Tomas Lindahl, for their research mapping how cells repair damaged DNA and preserve existing genetic information. Sancar, Modrich and Lindahl had been independently studying bacterial cells for more than 30 years. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, was presented to Aziz Sancar by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at a ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.

Sancar, who is the second Nobel Prize winner and the first Turkish citizen to receive this award in the field of science, said, "It is the educational revolution of Atatürk and the Republic of Turkey that led me to this prize. Therefore, the owner of this prize is Anıtkabir Museum, which represents Atatürk and the Republic of Turkey." Sancar handed over his Nobel Prize, medal and certificate to Anıtkabir. Sancar's award is exhibited in a special area reserved for him in the "Atatürk and the War of Independence Museum" in Anıtkabir.

The list of Sancar's most important awards is as follows:

• US National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award (1984)
• American Society for Photobiology Award (1990)
• US National Institutes of Health Award (1995)
• TÜBİTAK Science Award (1997)
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences Award (2004)
• Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (2005)
• TÜBA (Turkish Academy of Sciences) membership (2006)
• Vehbi Koç Award (2007)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2015)