Sydney Brenner: A Revolutionary Biologist

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sydney Brenner was one of the 20th Century’s greatest biologists. Born 90 years ago in South Africa to impoverished immigrant parents, Dr Brenner became a leading figure in the biological revolution that followed the discovery of the structure of DNA by Crick and Watson, using data from Rosalind Franklin, in the 1950s. Brenner’s insights and inventive experiments laid foundation stones for new science of molecular biology and the genetic age in which we live today, from the Human Genome Project to gene editing. Sydney Brenner talks to biologist and historian Matthew Cobb of the University of Manchester about this thrilling period in biological science, and Dr Brenner’s 20 year-long collaboration with DNA pioneer Francis Crick: a friendship which generated some of their most creative research.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Picture: Sydney Brenner, Credit: Cold Spring Harbor Lab Archive

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC
0:35.4	Sounds.
0:39.4	In the autumn of 2002, the winners of that year's Nobel Prizes assembled before the Swedish
0:45.9	Royal Family to the accompaniment of a Mozart March.
0:50.6	When the ceremony got to the prize for physiology or medicine, the sound of trumpets rang out,
0:55.8	and the name of Sydney Brenner was called.
0:58.8	Dr Sydney Brenner receives his medder and diploma from his majesty, the King of Sweden.
1:05.0	This edition of Discovery from the BBC is a profile of this giant of 20th century biology.
1:12.0	My name is Matthew Cobb and I'm a scientist and historian at the University of Manchester.
1:17.7	Earlier this year I visited Sydney Brenner in Singapore where he now lives to interview him about his life in science.
1:25.0	Although in many ways Brenner's crowning achievement was his Nobel Prize,
1:30.0	some of his most significant discoveries were made in the 1950s and 1960s,
1:35.0	years in which we revolutionised our understanding of how life works at the molecular level.
1:41.0	That revolution began in 1953 with the discovery of the double
1:46.4	helix structure of DNA by Jim Watson and Francis Crick. Soon after, Crick began another collaboration, this time with Sydney Brenner.
1:56.5	This partnership lasted 20 years and was marked by a series of brilliant sudden insights
2:02.4	in which the two friends show that the best science is as much
	...

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