Nobel Prize winner to speak at Faculty of Medicine

Comment on this story

Posted April 5, 2010

Dr. Paul Nurse will speak at the 2010 Dr. David M. Kovitz lecture Dr. Paul Nurse, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine and president of Rockefeller University in New York, will be a guest of the Faculty of Medicine for the annual Dr. David M. Kovitz lecture.

Nurse’s research focuses on the molecular machineries that control cell division and cell shape. Using the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a model system, his laboratory studies the cell cycle and cell morphogenesis controls operative in eukaryotic cells. His major past contribution was the co-discovery of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) as the key regulator molecule controlling S phase and mitosis, findings that have had implications for understanding cell reproduction, cell growth, development and cancer.

Nurse, a native of the United Kingdom, received his PhD  in cell biology and biochemistry from the University of East Anglia in 1973. He did postdoctoral work at universities in Bern, Switzerland, Edinburgh, and Sussex, and joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) in London in 1984. Following that, he moved to the University of Oxford as chair of its Department of Microbiology, and he returned to ICRF in 1993 as director of research. In 2002 Nurse was named chief executive of Cancer Research UK, formed when ICRF merged with the Cancer Research Campaign. He moved his laboratory to the United States upon being named president of Rockefeller University in 2003.

Nurse is a member of The Royal Society and a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Nurse has received numerous awards and honours including the Albert Lasker Award, the Royal Society’s Royal and Copley Medals, the Legion of Honor and the Gairdner International Award.  In 1999 he was honored with knighthood in Great Britain for services in cancer research and cell biology and since 2000 has been a member of CST advising the UK Prime Minister on science and technology.

The 2010 Dr. David M. Kovitz Lecture is being held on Tuesday, April 6th at 2:00pm in the Libin Lecture Theatre.