Sir Peter Brian Medawar was a world-renowned British immunologist born on February 28, 1915, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to a Lebanese Brazilian father and English mother who relocated to England during his childhood. He completed his zoology degree at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1935 and became a fellow of the college in 1938, establishing himself as a promising researcher in biological sciences. During World War II, he conducted pivotal research on skin grafting at the Burns Unit of Glasgow Royal Infirmary, which laid the foundation for his revolutionary work in transplantation immunology. His early investigations into tissue rejection mechanisms positioned him at the forefront of a field that would transform modern medicine and save countless lives through organ transplantation.
Medawar's seminal work on acquired immunological tolerance, conducted collaboratively with Leslie Brent and Rupert E. Billingham, fundamentally transformed transplantation medicine and earned him the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet. Through meticulous experimental procedures with mouse skin grafts, he demonstrated that the immune system could be trained to accept foreign tissue during early development, thereby experimentally confirming Burnet's theoretical prediction of immunological tolerance. His team's development of precise grafting techniques in 1951 provided the critical evidence that the body distinguishes between self and non-self, establishing the scientific basis for successful organ and tissue transplantation. This groundbreaking research resolved the fundamental barrier of immune rejection that had previously rendered transplantation impossible, directly enabling the development of modern transplant surgery and immunosuppressive therapies.
Beyond his experimental achievements, Medawar became one of the most influential scientific thinkers of the twentieth century through his extensive writings and public engagement as a philosopher of science. He received numerous prestigious honors including the Royal Medal in 1959, the Copley Medal in 1969, and the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Medal in his final year, reflecting his profound impact across scientific disciplines. His work established immunology as a rigorous scientific discipline that shifted from merely understanding the immune system to actively manipulating it for medical benefit, fundamentally changing the approach to medical research. Today, his discoveries continue to underpin all successful organ transplantation procedures worldwide, saving countless lives and inspiring generations of immunologists who build upon his foundational insights in the ongoing quest to conquer immune-related diseases and advance medical science.
