page_title: Peter Medawar
section_title: Awards and honours
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Medawar / Awards and honours
caption_attribution_description: English: Blue plaque erected on 14th July 2014 by English Heritage at 25 Downshire Hill, Hampstead, London NW3 1NT, London Borough of Camden
context_page_description: Sir Peter Brian Medawar OM CBE FRS was a British biologist and writer, whose works on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance were fundamental to the medical practice of tissue and organ transplants. For his scientific works he is regarded as the "father of transplantation". He is remembered for his wit both in person and in popular writings. Famous zoologists such as Richard Dawkins referred to him as "the wittiest of all scientific writers", and Stephen Jay Gould as "the cleverest man I have ever known".
  Medawar was the youngest child of a Lebanese father and a British mother, and was both a Brazilian and British citizen by birth. He studied at Marlborough College and Magdalen College, Oxford and was professor of zoology at the University of Birmingham and University College London. Until he was partially disabled by a cerebral infarction, he was Director of the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill. With his doctoral student Leslie Brent and postdoctoral fellow Rupert E. Billingham, he demonstrated the principle of acquired immunological tolerance, which was theoretically predicted by Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet.
context_section_description: Medawar was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1949. With Frank Macfarlane Burnet he shared the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance". The British government conferred him a CBE in 1958, knighted him in 1965, and appointed him to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1972, and Order of Merit in 1981. He was elected an EMBO Member in 1964 and received the Royal Medal in 1959, and the Copley Medal in 1969 both from the Royal Society. He was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science during 1968–1969. He was awarded the UNESCO  Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science in 1985. He was awarded a Honorary Doctor of Science Degree in 1961 by the University of Birmingham. He was elected a member of the American Society of Immunologists in 1971, and elected foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959, the American Philosophical Society in 1961, and the US National Academy of Sciences in 1965.
  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. 
  Medawar was awarded the 1987 Michael 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".
  Medawar has three awards named after him:
  Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal, awarded by the Royal Society for excellence in a subject relating to the history of science, philosophy of science or the social function of science, in memory of John Wilkins, John Desmond Bernal and Peter Medawar. The winner delivers the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Lecture.
  Medawar Medal, awarded by the British Transplant Society in recognition of significant research in organ transplantation.
  Peter Brian Medawar Medal, awarded by the State Medical Academy of Rio de Janeiro.
  The University of Oxford has established a research consortium named the Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research.
caption: Blue plaque erected on 14 July 2014 by English Heritage at 25 Downshire Hill, Hampstead
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