Sydney Brenner Quotes

South Africa, Biotechnologist
January 13, 1927 – April, 5, 2019.

Sydney Brenner CH FRS FMedSci MAE is a South African biologist and a 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate, shared with Bob Horvitz and John Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He established the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology, and founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California, U.S

Also known as Geneticist, University Teacher

The most important thing today is for young people to take responsibility, to actually know how to formulate an idea and how to work on it. Not to buy into the so-called apprenticeship.

Sydney Brenner
- Work
- Responsibility
- Idea
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
- Living
- Head
- Real World

Today, the Americans have developed a new culture in science based on the slavery of graduate students. Now, graduate students of American institutions are afraid... He's got to perform. The post-doc is an indentured labourer.

Sydney Brenner
The modern computer hovers between the obsolescent and the nonexistent.

Sydney Brenner
I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system. It's corrupt in many ways, in that scientists and academics have handed over to the editors of these journals the ability to make judgment on science and scientists.

Sydney Brenner
- Science
- Judgment
- Corrupt
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
People have always asked whether evolution is constantly driving onwards and upwards. Is there always going to be improvement? The answer is no: evolution is a progression of form and function, but it is not purposeful.

Sydney Brenner
I sometimes say I am the extinguished professor, because what I'd really like to be is the postdoc, to have that kind of thinking. I think one can get very set in his ways with titles like 'distinguished professor.'

Sydney Brenner

The supporters now, the bureaucrats of science, do not wish to take any risks. So in order to get it supported, they want to know from the start that it will work.

Sydney Brenner
- Science
- Support
- Risks
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