It was at Oxford as a postgraduate student that he published his groundbreaking research on genetics and proved for the first time that every cell in the body contains the same genes.
He did so by taking a cell from an adult frog's intestine, removing its genes and implanting them into an egg cell, which grew into a clone of the adult frog.
The idea was controversial at the time because it contradicted previous studies by much more senior scientists, and it was a decade before the then-graduate student's work became widely accepted.
But it later led directly to the cloning of Dolly the Sheep by Prof Ian Wilmut in 1996, and to the subsequent discovery by Prof Yamanaka that adult cells can be "reprogrammed" into stem cells for use in medicine.
This means that cells from someone's skin can be made into stem cells which in turn can turn into any type of tissue in the body, meaning they can replace diseased or damaged tissue in patients.
Sir John admitted it would have been "particularly nice" if Prof Wilmut had been given a third share of the award, but said he would celebrate nonetheless with a drinks reception at Cambridge last night.
He joined the university in 1971 following spells at the California Institute of Technology and Oxford, and in 1989 was a founding member of the Wellcome/CRC Institute for Cell Biology and Cancer - later renamed the Gurdon Institute - where he still works full-time at the age of 79.
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