Sir Paul Nurse

Facts

Sir Paul M. Nurse

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Sir Paul M. Nurse
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001

Born: 25 January 1949, Norwich, United Kingdom

Affiliation at the time of the award: Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, United Kingdom

Prize motivation: “for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle”

Prize share: 1/3

Work

From the beginning organisms evolve from one cell, which divides and becomes new cells that in turn divide. Eventually different types of cells are formed with different roles. For an organism to function and develop normally, cell division has to occur at a suitable pace. Paul Nurse has helped to show how the cell cycle is controlled. Through studies of yeast in the mid-1970s, Nurse was able to show that a special gene plays a decisive role in several of the cell cycle’s phases. In 1987 he identified a corresponding human gene.

To cite this section
MLA style: Sir Paul Nurse – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 10 Dec 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2001/nurse/facts/>

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