Paul Nurse is a geneticist and cell biologist who studies how the eukaryotic cell cycle is controlled.  His major work has focused on cyclin-dependent protein kinases and how they regulate cell reproduction. He is president of the Royal Society, has a research lab at the Francis Crick Institute in London, and is chancellor of the University of Bristol. He is also a former chief executive of Cancer Research UK, former president of Rockefeller University, and former director and chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute.

He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and has received the Albert Lasker Award, the Gairdner Award, the Louis Jeantet Prize and the Royal Society’s Royal and Copley Medals. He was knighted in 1999 and made a Companion of Honour in 2022 for services to science and medicine in the UK and abroad, received the Legion d’honneur in 2003 from France, and the Order of the Rising Sun in 2018 from Japan. He served for 15 years on the UK Council of Science and Technology, advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and has recently returned to serve on the council again.  He was also a chief scientific advisor for the European Union.

In 2020 he wrote What is Life which has been published in 22 countries. Nurse flies gliders and vintage aeroplanes and has been a qualified bush pilot. He also likes the theatre, hill-walking, going to museums and art galleries, and running very slowly.

More about Paul Nurse and the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine