Editing Peter Medawar (section)

== Personal life ==
Medawar never knew the exact meaning of his surname, an [[Arabic language|Arabic]] word, he was told, for "to make round"; but which a friend explained to him as "little round fat man".<ref name="new" />

Medawar married [[Jean Shinglewood Taylor]] on 27 February 1937. They met while in graduate class at Oxford, he at Magdalen and Taylor at [[Somerville College, Oxford|Somerville College]]. Taylor approached him for the meaning of "[[heuristic]]", which she had to ask twice, and he had to finally offer lessons in philosophy. Medawar described her as "the most beautiful woman in Oxford"; but Taylor's impression was he looked "mildly diabolical." Taylor's family objected to their marriage as Medawar had "no background, and no money." Her mother was explicitly afraid of having "black" grandchildren; her aunt disinherited her. The couple had two sons, Charles and Alexander, and two daughters, Caroline and Louise.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Richmond|first=Caroline|date=2005-06-11|title=Lady Jean Medawar|journal=The BMJ|volume=330|issue=7504|pages=1392|doi=10.1136/bmj.330.7504.1392|pmc=558304}}</ref>

Medawar was interested in a wide range of subjects including [[opera]], [[philosophy]] and [[cricket]]. He was exceptionally tall, 6&nbsp;ft 5 inches (196&nbsp;cm), physically robust, with a big voice noted particularly during his lectures. He was renowned for wit and humour, which he claimed he inherited from his "raucous" mother. As he completed his PhD research in 1941, he did not receive the degree as he could not afford the requisite £25, to which he commented:

<blockquote>I'm an impostor. I am a doctor, but not a PhD... Morally I'm a PhD, in the sense I could have had one if I'd been able to afford it. Anyway it was unfashionable in my day. John Young [probably referring to [[John Zachary Young]]] was not a PhD either. A PhD was regarded then as a newfangled German importation, as bizarre and undesirable as having German bands playing on streetcorners.<ref name="new" /></blockquote>

He was regarded as the philosopher [[Karl Popper]]'s best-known disciple in science.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Calver|first=Neil|date=2013-12-20|title=Sir Peter Medawar: science, creativity and the popularization of Karl Popper|journal=Notes and Records of the Royal Society|language=en|volume=67|issue=4|pages=301–314|doi=10.1098/rsnr.2013.0022|pmc=3826194}}</ref>

Medawar was the maternal grandfather of the screenwriter and director [[Alex Garland]].<ref>{{Cite news|last=Bhattacharji|first=Alex|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/alex-garland-stands-by-his-vision-for-annihilation-1518706659|title=The Visionary Director of 'Ex Machina' Addresses the Controversy Surrounding His New Film|date=2018-02-15|work=The Wall Street Journal|access-date=2020-02-16|language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Views on religion ===
Medawar declared:

{{blockquote|... I believe that a reasonable case can be made for saying, not that we believe in God because He exists but rather that He exists because we believe in Him... Considered as an element of the world, God has the same degree and kind of objective reality as do other products of mind... I regret my disbelief in God and religious answers generally, for I believe it would give satisfaction and comfort to many in need of it if it were possible to discover and propound good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in God... To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive... I am a rationalist—something of a period piece nowadays, I admit...<ref>{{cite book|author=Medawar, Medawar| year=1988|chapter='The question of the existence of God|title='The Limits of Science|publisher= Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-505212-1|pages=94–98|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o8iSP7DmHT8C}}</ref>}}

Although he normally sympathised with Christianity especially on moral teachings, he found the Biblical stories unethical and was "shocked by the way in which [Biblical] characters deceived and defrauded each other." He even asked his wife "to make sure that such a book did not fall into the hands of [their] children."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Medawar|first=Peter|title=Memoir of a Thinking Radish: An Autobiography. Op cit.|year=1986|pages=18}}</ref>

Nonetheless, he also said the following, which suggests that although religion has good value for humans in aggregate, it does not help them all equally:

{{blockquote|Religion has not sustained me on any of the occasions when the comfort it professes would have been most welcome.<ref name=paida/>}}