130mm. Silver medal 1,240g, bronze medal 1,053g. By Rui Sanches.
Struck to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Featuring various instruments such as clocks, a sextant and signs of the Zodiac. The silver medal number 40 out of 80 on the edge, the bronze numbered 861 out of 1,000.
A pair of incredibly impressive and imposing medals, the silver one especially so. Both virtually as struck and housed in fitted cases of issue, accompanied by information cards. The silver medal from a mintage of just 80 medals and the bronze from a mintaage of 1,000 medals. Also accompanying this medal pair is a letter on behalf of the board of trustees of the CGF, congratulating Dr Syndey Brenner on his 90th birthday in 2017 and thanking him for his help and support. The letter goes on to state 'To Honour your dedication to the Foundation, the Board of Trustees decided to offer you the Gulbenkian silver medal, which is the highest recognition the Foundation awards to its supporters'.
Please note that due to the exceptional weight of this item, it will incur additional postage charges. Please contact us before purchase to discuss.
Sydney Brenner CH FRS FMedSci MAE (13 January 1927 – 5 April 2019) was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. 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, United States.
He was one of the first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Francis Crick and James Watson; at the time he and the other scientists were working at the University of Oxford's Chemistry Department. All were impressed by the new DNA model, especially Brenner, who subsequently worked with Crick in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and the newly opened Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB). Brenner made several seminal contributions to the emerging field of molecular biology in the 1960s. The first was to prove that all overlapping genetic coding sequences were impossible. This insight separated the coding function from structural constraints as proposed in a clever code by George Gamow. This led Francis Crick to propose the concept of a hypothetical molecule (later identified as transfer RNA or tRNA) that transfers the genetic information from RNA to proteins. Brenner gave the name "adaptor hypothesis" in 1955. Brenner conceived of the concept of messenger RNA during an April 1960 conversation with Crick and François Jacob, and together with Jacob and Matthew Meselson went on to prove its existence later that summer.
Brenner then focused on establishing a free-living roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of animal development including neural development. He chose this 1-millimeter-long soil roundworm mainly because it is simple, is easy to grow in bulk populations, and turned out to be quite convenient for genetic analysis. For this work, he shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and John Sulston.
His contributions to the establishment of today’s gene technology and the important role he played as the world leader in this technology are incredibly significant.