Aziz Sancar
| Aziz Sancar | |
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Aziz Sancar, Nobel Laureate in chemistry in Stockholm 2015
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September 8, 1946 Savur, Mardin, Turkey |
| Citizenship | Turkey and United States |
| Nationality | Turkish |
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| Spouses | Gwen Sancar |
Aziz Sancar (born 8 September 1946) is a Turkish-American biochemist and molecular biologist specializing in DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoints, and circadian clock. In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Tomas Lindahl and Paul L. Modrich for their mechanistic studies of DNA repair.
Sancar is currently the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is the co-founder of the Aziz & Gwen Sancar Foundation, which is a non-profit organization to promote Turkish culture and to support Turkish students in the United States.
Aziz Sancar was born into a lower-middle-class family, in the Savur district of Mardin Province, southeastern Turkey on September 8, 1946. His oldest brother; Kenan Sancar is a retired Brigadier-General of the Turkish Armed Forces. He is the cousin of HDP Mardin deputy Mithat Sancar. He was the seventh of eight children.
His parents were illiterate; however, they put great emphasis on education. He was educated by idealistic teachers who received their education in the Village Institutes, he later stated that this was a great inspiration to him. Throughout his school life, Sancar had great academic success that was noted by his teachers. He wanted to study chemistry whilst at high school, but was persuaded to study medicine after five of his classmates also got into medicine along with him. As such, he studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Istanbul University.
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