UNC Opens Nobel Prize Exhibit

A larger-than-expected crowd of faculty members and students gathered at Davis Library in the heart of the UNC campus on Wednesday to hear from the university’s two Nobel Prize winners – Dr. Oliver Smithies and Dr. Aziz Sancar.

While introducing the laureates, Chancellor Carol Folt said that the library was the perfect place for such a ceremony.

“The late historian Shelby Foote – who was a 1939 UNC graduate – said, ‘A university is just a group of buildings gathered around the library.’”

Folt did acknowledge that the labs around campus also deserve some credit on this occasion as the two scientists were being celebrated.

The two Nobel Prize winners – Smithies in 2007 and Sancar in 2015 – donated their medals to be a part of a year-long showcase titled, “Be Inspired: Carolina’s Nobel Laureates.”

Sancar said his donation is a permanent loan because that is the best way he could think of to give back to the university.

“I applied to 50 universities for a job, this was the only place that gave me a job,” Sancar said. “And it has supported me all these years, and I’m very grateful to the university.”

While it is hard to find any honor more prestigious than the Nobel Prize, Sancar – a native of Turkey – said that his most-prized honor since receiving the recognition came in the form of a plaque from a union of Turkish workers in Sweden.

“That’s the one I value the most, and that’s the only one in my office,” Sancar said. Sancar added the English translation of the Turkish inscription on the plaque equates to a congratulations for all of his hard work. “Because they acknowledge the importance to hard work and that is my suggestion, my advice to students.”

Smithies said that, while the display may provide a boost to some ambitious students walking around the UNC campus, he hopes they rather strive to accomplish all that they can and live a happy life.

“[The medallions] are enjoyable things to look at and maybe they inspire people, but really people shouldn’t think about, ‘I’m going to go and do work to get the Nobel Prize,’” Smithies said. “That never works. People who try to get the Nobel Prize almost never do.

“People who do something and then find that I’ve done something amazing, then that might win a Nobel Prize but not the other way around.”

READ MORE: Nobel Prize Winners Sancar and Smithies Take Similar Paths to UNC – Following Their Wives

Smithies added that his work, or “play” as he refers to it, didn’t stop with the Nobel Prize and that he was just excited to get back into the lab for another experiment and that he hoped the students would find the same path.

“Find something that will make you still come to play in the morning and go to a meeting and then, as I will do this afternoon, I will finish my playing. And the experiment didn’t work, I might say,” Smithies said referencing an experiment he had orchestrated earlier in the day. “But it was well done.”

The below video of the event was produced by UNC: