Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought ... [The Phenomenon of Man] is written in an all but totally unintelligible style, and this is construed as prima-facie evidence of profundity.

He was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet.

Until he was partially disabled by a cerebral infarction Medawar was Director of the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill. Sir Peter Brian Medawar OM CBE FRS (28 February 1915 – 2 October 1987) was a British biologist born in Brazil whose work on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance was fundamental to the practice of tissue and organ transplants. He was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet.