Medawar, Peter

[person]

English biologist and essayist born in Brazil (1915-1987). Though he initially studied zoology, he became more interested in medicine in graduate school. With Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet, Medawar won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1960 "for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance"; Medawar's work concerned skin grafting and other organ transplants in humans. In his later years, he became a prolific author about the nature of science, and is well known for his essays "The Art of the Soluble" and "The Phenomenon of Man."