Paul Nurse
Sir Paul M. Nurse (b. January 25, 1949) is a British biochemist, he was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland H. Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt for their disoveries regarding cell cycle regulation by cyclin and cyclin dependent kinases.
Nurse was born and raised in Norfolk. He received his undergraduate degree in 1970 from the University of Birmingham and his PhD in 1973 from the University of East Anglia. Beginning in 1976, Nurse identified the gene cdc2 in yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe). This gene controls the progression of the cell cycle from G1 phase to S phase and the transition from G2 phase to mitosis. In 1987, Nurse identified the homologous gene in human, CDK1, which codes for a cyclin dependant kinase.
In 1984, Nurse joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF). He left in 1988 to chair the department of microbiology at the University of Oxford. He then returned to the ICRF as Director of Research in 1993, and in 1996 was named Director General of the ICRF, which became Cancer Research UK in 2002. In 2003, he became president of Rockefeller University in New York City where he continues to work on the cell cycle of fission yeast.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Nurse has received numerous awards and honors. In 1989, he became a fellow of the Royal Society and in 1995 he became a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1998. Nurse was knighted in 1999. He was awarded the French Legion d'Honneur in 2002.