Martin Evans

Sir Martin John Evans FRS FMedSci is a Welsh biologist who, with Matthew Kaufman, was the first to culture mice embryonic stem cells and cultivate them in a laboratory in 1981. He is also known, along with Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies, for his work in the development of the knockout mouse and the related technology of gene targeting, a method of using embryonic stem cells to create specific gene modifications in mice. In 2007, the three shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of their discovery and contribution to the efforts to develop new treatments for illnesses in humans.

Evans was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England onJanuary 1941. His mother was a teacher. His father maintained a mechanical workshop and taught Evans to use tools and machines including a lathe. Evans was close to his grandfather who was a choir master at a Baptist Church for overyears, and whose main interests were music, poetry, and the Baptist Church. His mothers brother was a professor of astronomy at the University of Cambridge. As a boy Evans was quiet, shy and inquisitive. He liked science, and his parents encouraged his education. He remembers loving old science books and receiving an electric experimental set which he wanted for Christmas. He attributes to a chemistry set, from which he learned basic chemistry, for the development of one of his greatest amateur passions. He went to middle school at St Dunstans College, an independent school for boys in South East London, where he started chemistry and physics classes, and studied biology. He worked hard studying for

Source: Wikipedia