Nobel laureate Sancar concludes visit to Turkey

ANKARA

Turkish-origin Nobel laureate Dr. Aziz Sancar concluded his three-day visit to Turkey Wednesday, which was made on the invitation of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In remarks made to the media at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport before he took his flight back to the U.S., Sancar said that he was planning to come back to Turkey in May next year.

Sancar, who is from southeastern Mardin province, was given the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in mapping cells that repaired ultraviolet damage to DNA.

He was honored alongside two other sceintists Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich. He is based in the U.S. at the University of North Carolina.

On Wednesday, Sancar and his wife Esta Gwendolyn and daughter Rose Lorraine Peifer met with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu for a breakfast in Ankara.

On Tuesday, Erdogan gave a dinner in Sancar’s honor at the Presidential Palace in Ankara.

Erdogan also announced that a high school in Turkey’s southeastern Mardin province, where the Nobel laureate was born, would be named after him. He added that an institution, which was recently built in Mardin, would be named as Professor Dr. Aziz Sancar Science and Art Center.

“Aziz Sancar Science Olympics” as well as a composition competition on Sancar and science will be held for students at primarily and secondary schools in Mardin, Erdogan announced.

About his meeting with Erdogan, Sancar said: “I thanked him for inviting me here…Coming here and seeing this enthusiasm made me very happy”.

Sancar also visited Anitkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of Turkish Republic.

During his Ankara visit, Sancar told the media that his Nobel medal and certificate will be displayed at Anitkabir on Turkey’s national holiday on May 19, 2016, when the country celebrates the beginning of its independence war.

Sancar is the second Turk to win a Nobel Prize following writer Orhan Pamuk, who was awarded the accolade for literature in 2006.