science · 28 February 1915 · 109 years ago
birth
Born 28 Feb 1915; died 2 Oct 1987 at age 72.
Sir Peter Brian Medawar was an English immunologist and author who shared, with Sir Frank Burnet, the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of acquired immunological tolerance, which enabled organ and tissue transplantation. Medawar inoculated the embryos of mice, before they had developed the ability to form antibodies, with tissue cells from another strain. Subsequently, the “foreign” proteins were accepted, even when later the capability to form antibodies existed. Skin grafts from the second strain were then accepted by the inoculated mice.
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