Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Roundworms, Ridicule and the Nobel Prize

If you doubt that the life of a molecular biologist and geneticist can make for delightful reading, then you have not yet seen “Sydney Brenner: a Biography” by Dr. Errol C. Friedberg from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

Friedberg, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, explains how Brenner, honored with the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was born in 1927 into a South African Jewish family of Latvian/Lithuanian origin. Brenner’s small hometown, Germiston, once had a thriving Jewish community, now dispersed. As Brenner recalled his school days:

I suppose that my sense of humor came from the gestalt of being a member of a Jewish family. I’ve always thought that whereas most people’s lives consist of drama on one hand and comedy on the other, for Jews life consists primarily of melodrama and farce. Everything is exaggerated!

Equally extreme was Brenner’s attraction to science, which he shared with fellow South African Jewish students such as Seymour Papert, a future artificial intelligence pioneer alongside MIT’s Marvin Minsky. Another ally was Brenner’s future wife May Covitz, whose father’s name was truncated by a South African immigration official from Isaacovitz to “Isaac Covitz.”

When Brenner reached England for further studies at Oxford, his sense of humor continued in puns referring to Oxford colleagues and higher learning: “The first time that they mentioned Bessel functions, I thought they were talking about a Jewish wedding.” By contrast, Brenner is wholly serious when describing a 1953 encounter with the ground-breaking DNA research by James Dewey Watson and Francis Crick: “Standing there and looking at the DNA structure, I felt as if a curtain had been lifted in my mind.”

Inspired and erudite, Brenner eventually arrived at such fundamental concepts as messenger RNA, the first computer matrix analysis of nucleic acids, and the use of a specific roundworm for investigating neural development. Ardently pursuing scientific research, Brenner always maintained a sense of the ridiculous, and even wrote a parody script, “How the Quest was Won,” ridiculing a 1987 BBC film, “Life Story” starring Jeff Goldblum as the DNA-deciphering Watson.

Even so, Brenner could be argumentative vehemence incarnate; the French Jewish biologist François Jacob recalled one monumental tussle between Brenner and Crick: “[They] began to gesticulate. To argue at top speed in great agitation. A red-faced Francis. A Sydney with bristling eyebrows.” Even bristling, Brenner, as recounted in this new book, is a delight.

Watch Sydney Brenner in March 2010, offering advice for appreciating reality.

Watch Brenner at the Salk Institute in April 2010.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.