The British zoologist Peter Brian Medawar (1915-1987) made important contributions to the knowledge of growth, aging, and especially the biology of tissue transplantation.

Peter Medawar was born on Feb. 28, 1915, in Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil of a British mother and Lebanese father. He was educated at Marlborough College and subsequently at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied zoology and comparative anatomy in the Goodrichian tradition. His early research was concerned with the factors controlling growth in tissue culture. He was greatly influenced in this work by Darcy Thompson, author of Growth and Form. From an early stage in his career Medawar distinguished himself by his competence in both the experimental and the theoretical aspects of biology. He won several prizes at Oxford, where he became a university demonstrator and fellow of Magdalen College.

During World War II Medawar investigated the repair of peripheral nerve injuries. In one of...