Sir John Bertrand Gurdon FRS (born 2 October 1933) is a British developmental biologist, best known for his pioneering research in nuclear transplantation[2][3][4] and cloning.

[8] Gurdon attended Edgeborough prep school before Eton College, where he ranked last out of the 250 boys in his year group at biology, and was in the bottom set in every other science subject.

"[10][11][12] Gurdon explains it is the only document he ever framed; he also told a reporter: "When you have problems like an experiment doesn't work, which often happens, it's nice to remind yourself that perhaps after all you are not so good at this job and the schoolmaster may have been right!

For his DPhil degree he studied nuclear transplantation in a frog species of the genus Xenopus,[14][15] supervised by Dr Michail Fischberg at Oxford University.

Gurdon and colleagues also pioneered the use of Xenopus (genus of highly aquatic frog) eggs and oocytes to translate microinjected messenger RNA molecules,[27] a technique which has been widely used to identify the proteins encoded and to study their function.

During his time as Master of Magdalene, Gurdon caused some controversy by suggesting that Fellows might occasionally be allowed to deliver "an address on anything they would like to talk about" in college chapel services.

[17] In 1989 he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine “for his introduction of the xenopus oocyte into molecular biology and his demonstration that the nucleus of a differentiated cell and of the egg differ in expression but not in the content of genetic material”.