Sydney Brenner

**Sydney Brenner** CH FRS (13 January 1927 – 5 April 2019) was a South African biologist and a 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate, shared with Robert Horvitz and John Sulston. He was of Jewish descent.

Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology.

He established the roundworm _Caenorhabditis elegans_ as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology. He founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California.

## Work

Brenner made several important contributions to molecular biology in the 1960s. With Francis Crick and others, he worked out the genetic code, where triplets of nucleic acid bases are translated into amino acids.

Brenner then focused on establishing _Caenorhabditis elegans_ as a model organism for the investigation of animal development including development of the nervous system. Brenner chose this 1 millimeter-long soil roundworm mainly because it is simple, is easy to grow in bulk populations, and turned out to be convenient for genetic analysis. For this work, he shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Robert Horvitz and John Sulston. His Nobel lecture in December 2002, "Nature's gift to science" is a homage to this modest nematode. He considers chosing the right organism is as important as picking the right problems to work on. In recognition of his pioneering work on _C. elegans_, another closely related nematode was given the scientific name _Caenorhabditis brenneri_.

Brenner founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, CA in 1996. He is currently associated with the Salk Institute, the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, the Singapore Biomedical Research Council and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In August 2005 Brenner was appointed president of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. He is also on the Board of Scientific Governors at the Scripps Research Institute.

Known for his scientific insight and wit, Brenner for many years penned a regular column ("Loose Ends") in the journal _Current Biology_. Brenner was noted for his generosity of ideas and the great number of students and colleagues his ideas have stimulated.

He was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 1989.

Brenner died on 5 April 2019 in Singapore. He was 92.

## Books

- Brenner S. 1997. _Loose ends: a collection of loose ends/false starts columns by Uncle Syd, from January 1994 to December 2000_. Current Biology.
- Brenner S. 2001. _My life in science_, with Lewis Wolpert; edited by Errol C. Friedberg and Eleanor Lawrence. Biomed Central.
- Friedberg, Errol 2010. _Sydney Brenner: a biography_. CSHL Press.

## Related pages

- List of biologists

## Other websites

- Sydney Brenner at NobelPrize.org

## Infobox (scientist)

- **name**: Sydney Brenner
- **image**: Sydney Brenner OIST 2008 (33208371153) (cropped).jpg
- **caption**: Brenner in 2008
- **birth place**: Germiston, Gauteng, Union of South Africa
- **death place**: Singapore
- **nationality**: South African
- **field**: Biology
- **work institutions**: University of California, Berkeley
Molecular Sciences Institute
King's College, Cambridge
- **alma mater**: University of California, Berkeley Postdoctoral fellow
- **known for**: Genetic code, _Caenorhabditis elegans_, Apoptosis
- **prizes**: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2002