Sir John Bertrand Gurdon FRS was born on October 2, 1933, and passed away on October 7, 2025. He was a British scientist who studied how living things develop. He is most famous for his important research on moving nuclei between cells and cloning.

In 2009, he received the Lasker Award. In 2012, he and Shinya Yamanaka shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for finding a way to change mature cells into stem cells.

Early life and career

Gurdon was born on October 2, 1933, in Dippenhall and grew up in the nearby town of Frensham in Surrey. He attended a preparatory school in Edinburgh before going to Eton College, where he ranked last among 250 boys in his year group in biology and was placed in the lowest level for all other science subjects. A teacher wrote a report stating, "I think he wants to be a scientist, but based on his current performance, this seems unlikely." Gurdon explains this is the only document he ever framed. He also told a reporter, "When experiments fail, which happens often, it is helpful to remember that perhaps you are not as skilled at this work, and the teacher may have been correct."

Gurdon went to Christ Church, Oxford, to study classics before switching to zoology and earning a Master of Arts degree. For his DPhil degree, he researched nuclear transplantation in a type of frog called Xenopus, under the guidance of Dr. Michail Fischberg at Oxford University. After working as a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech, he returned to England and held early positions in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford from 1962 to 1971.

Gurdon spent much of his research career at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and later in the Department of Zoology, starting work there in 1972. He became a professor at the University of Cambridge in 1983. In 1989, he helped found the Wellcome/CRC Institute for Cell Biology and Cancer in Cambridge. The institute was renamed in his honor in 2004, and he served as its chairman until 2001. He was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics from 1991 to 1995 and served as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, from 1995 to 2002.

Research

In 1958, Gurdon, who was working at the University of Oxford, successfully cloned a frog by using complete nuclei from the body cells of a Xenopus tadpole. This work built on earlier research by Briggs and King in 1952, who transplanted nuclei from early embryo cells, and by Har Swarup in 1956, who reported in Nature that he had induced polyploidy in the stickleback fish, Gasterosteus aculatus. At that time, Gurdon could not prove that the transplanted nuclei came from a fully developed cell. This was later confirmed in 1975 by a team at the Basel Institute for Immunology in Switzerland. They transplanted a nucleus from a lymphocyte (a type of cell that makes antibodies, showing it was fully developed) into an egg without a nucleus and created living tadpoles.

Gurdon’s experiments changed how scientists understood development. The techniques he developed for moving nuclei between cells are still used today. The word "clone," which comes from the Greek word klōn meaning "twig," had been used since the early 1900s to describe plants. In 1963, the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane used the word "clone" for the first time to describe animals, based on Gurdon’s findings.

Gurdon and his colleagues also helped develop methods using Xenopus (a type of frog) eggs and egg cells to study messenger RNA molecules. This technique allowed scientists to identify proteins and learn about their roles.

Later, Gurdon focused on studying how cells communicate during development and how nuclei are reprogrammed during experiments. His work included examining the roles of special proteins called histone variants and the process of removing chemical markers from transplanted DNA.

Politics and religion

Gurdon said he was politically moderate and religiously uncertain because "there is no scientific evidence either way." While serving as Master of Magdalene, Gurdon caused some controversy by proposing that Fellows might sometimes be allowed to give speeches on any topic they wanted during college chapel services. In an interview with EWTN.com, Gurdon stated, "I'm what you might call open-minded. I'm not a Roman Catholic. I'm a Christian, of the Church of England."

Personal life and death

Gurdon married Jean Elizabeth Margaret Curtis, and they had two children together. He considered himself an "anti-intellectual" and disliked reading books. He enjoyed skiing, hiking, playing squash, and playing tennis.

Gurdon died on October 7, 2025, five days after his 92nd birthday. Professors from the University of Cambridge and the Gurdon Institute honored him.

Honours and awards

In 1971, Gurdon was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and was knighted in 1995 for his work in Developmental Biology.

He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978, the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1980, and the American Philosophical Society in 1983. Since 2005, he has held the position of Honorary Member of the American Association of Anatomists. In 1991, he was named a Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE).

In 2004, the Wellcome Trust / Cancer Research UK Institute for Cell Biology and Cancer was renamed the Gurdon Institute in his honor. He received the 2009 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award and delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians in 2014. In 2017, he was awarded the Golden Plate Award by the American Academy of Achievement.

Gurdon was named an Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 2010, of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2011, of the Anatomical Society in 2013, of the American Association for Cancer Research in 2013, of the Royal College of Physicians (Hon FRCP) in 2014, and of the Royal Society of Biology (Hon FRSB) in 2015.

He received honorary doctorates, including Hon DSc (Oxon) and Hon ScD (Cantab), as well as other awards and medals.

In 1989, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine for introducing the xenopus oocyte into molecular biology and showing that the nucleus of a differentiated cell and an egg differ in gene expression but not in genetic material.

In 2012, Gurdon shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Shinya Yamanaka for discovering that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent. His Nobel Lecture was named "The Egg and the Nucleus: A Battle for Supremacy."