{"id":8694,"date":"2019-02-01T12:15:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T17:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/?p=8694"},"modified":"2019-11-20T10:18:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T15:18:27","slug":"sancars-replica-nobel-medal-now-on-display-at-wilson-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/biochem\/news\/sancars-replica-nobel-medal-now-on-display-at-wilson-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Sancar\u2019s Replica Nobel Medal Now on Display at Wilson Library"},"content":{"rendered":"
Aziz Sancar, MD, PhD, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, gifted one of three replicas of the Nobel Prize medal to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is now on display in the newly installed numismatics exhibit, which opened Monday at the Wilson Special Collections Library. Sancar donated this gold-plated medal as permanent gift to the university with the intention to motivate students to pursue research at the highest level.<\/p>\n
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This medal was first displayed at the Davis Library in April 2016 along with the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology medal, which Oliver Smithies, DPhil, earned for his pioneering work on gene targeting and knockout mice.<\/p>\n
Sancar, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics with a joint appointment in the biology department, won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work mapping the cellular mechanisms that underlie DNA repair, which occurs in all of us every day in response to damage caused by outside forces, such as ultraviolet radiation and other environmental factors.<\/p>\n