Profiles of the 2015 Nobel winners from Duke, UNC
Paul Modrich
Age: 69
Born: June 13, 1946, in New Mexico
Research focus: DNA mismatch repair
At Duke: Arrived at Duke in 1976, where he is the James B. Duke professor of biochemistry in the Duke School of Medicine. He is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Science.
Education: Bachelor of science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1968; doctorate, Stanford University, 1973
Family: Wife, Vickers Burdett, also a Duke biochemist, and children
How he heard he won the Nobel: Modrich and his wife were vacationing at their cabin in New Hampshire when he got the news. First he woke his wife. Then he called his assistant, Joanne Bisson, who was driving to work at the time. He apologized, telling Bisson, “the office is going to be crazy today.” Bisson spent the day answering calls from well-wishers and reporters. The office, she said, was “over the moon.” She thought it was fitting Modrich was absent for all the commotion. “He is the most humble man,” she said. “He’s happy to be away today. He just doesn’t like attention.”
Early interest in science: Modrich said growing up in a small town in northern New Mexico instilled in him a love of the natural world. “There was huge biological diversity around me,” he said on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute website. “Within five miles, the ecology can change dramatically – it was very thought-provoking.” His father, who was a high school biology teacher, gave him some advice when the discovery of the double helix was only about a decade old: “You should learn about this DNA stuff.”
Aziz Sancar
Age: 69
Born: Sept. 8, 1946, in Savur-Mardin, Turkey
Research focus: DNA repair
At UNC: Sancar is the Sarah Graham Kenan professor of biochemistry at UNC. He came to UNC in 1982, mainly because he and his wife could get jobs at the same university.
Education: Istanbul University, medical degree, 1969; University of Texas at Dallas, doctoral degree, 1977
Wife: Gwen Sancar, a UNC biochemist and biophysicist, who also has researched DNA repair
How he heard he won the Nobel: His wife answered the phone at 5 a.m. in their Chapel Hill home. The caller asked to speak to her husband, and she, trying to protect him from an early-morning call, asked if she could tell him what it was about. The woman told her she could not, but it “was an important call from Stockholm.” Since then his phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Even the president of Turkey had trouble connecting on Wednesday for a congratulatory call.
Outside the lab: He enjoys watching sports and is a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, the UNC women’s soccer team, the UNC volleyball team and of the Galatasaray S.K. soccer team in Istanbul.
Reaching out to fellow Turks: Aziz and Gwen Sancar have created a Turkish center in a house on Franklin Street so students and scholars visiting from Turkey will have a place to go that feels like home. Part of their reason for starting it was Aziz remembers going to college from the small mountain community where he lived and finding fellowship inside the homes his college had set up for students from each of the Turkish provinces.
This story was originally published October 7, 2015 at 9:40 PM with the headline "Profiles of the 2015 Nobel winners from Duke, UNC."