Sydney Brenner quotes

Sydney Brenner was a South African biologist renowned for his pioneering work in molecular biology and genetics. His research played a crucial role in deciphering the genetic code and advancing the use of the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. He made significant contributions to the understanding of how genes control cellular development. Here are 17 of his quotes:

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.

Sydney Brenner

In my second year, after moving to the Medical School, I began the courses of Anatomy and Physiology. I had begun to see that I was interested in cells and their functions.

Sydney Brenner

I lived at home and I cycled every morning to the railway station to travel by train to Johannesburg followed by a walk to the University, carrying sandwiches for my lunch and returning in the evening the same way.

Sydney Brenner

Current ideas of the uses of Model Organisms spring form the exemplars of the past and choosing the right organism for one's research is as important as finding the right problems to work on. In all my research these two problems have been closely intertwined.

Sydney Brenner

Even God wouldn't get a grant today because somebody on the committee would say, oh those were very interesting experiments (creating the universe), but they've never been repeated. And then someone else would say, yes and he did it a long time ago, what's he done recently? And a third would say, to top it all, he published it all in an un-refereed journal.

Sydney Brenner

I think for the first time we can attack the fundamental biology of man.

Sydney Brenner

Living most of the time in a world created mostly in one's head, does not make for an easy passage in the real world.

Sydney Brenner

A lot of the things that have been accomplished in science have been accomplished on the basis of ignorance ... in the sense that you import into the science people from outside. Because once you have an established science, it has got its high priests - the guys who know everything that will work or won't work. And they don't want to be bothered. So you have to have a challenge. And the great thing is that young people are ignorant, and we should catch them before they turn into the priesthood. So I think that science should have a much more daring approach.

Sydney Brenner

The moment I saw the model and heard about the complementing base pairs I realized that it was the key to understanding all the problems in biology we had found intractable - it was the birth of molecular biology.

Sydney Brenner

So that's when I saw the DNA model for the first time, in the Cavendish, and that's when I saw that this was it. And in a flash you just knew that this was very fundamental.

Sydney Brenner

There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.

Sydney Brenner

Many have gone on to do important scientific work but all remember those wonderful times when we and our science were young and our excitement in meeting new challenges knew no bounds.

Sydney Brenner

The modern computer hovers between the obsolescent and the nonexistent.

Sydney Brenner

I completed the first three years of primary school in one year and was admitted to the local school the age of six directly into the fourth year, some two years younger than all my contemporaries.

Sydney Brenner

In 1995, I founded The Molecular Sciences Institute with a gift from the Philip Morris Company where I hoped that we could create an environment where young people could pursue science in an atmosphere of harmonious purpose and high intellectual challenge.

Sydney Brenner