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Paul Nurse

English geneticist and Nobel laureate for cell cycle control.

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Paul Nurse

via Wikipedia: List of biologists · see source

Sir Paul Maxime Nurse is an English geneticist who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries of proteins controlling cell division.[1] Nurse was born on 25 January 1949 and was raised by his grandparents, believing them to be his parents.[1][2] The Royal Society's president and the Francis Crick Institute's former Chief Executive and Director is Paul Nurse.[1]

Life and work

Nurse's mother went to Norwich at age 18 to hide his illegitimacy, and his maternal grandmother pretended to be his mother.[3][4] He identified the gene cdc2 in fission yeast in 1976, which controls cell cycle transitions.[5][6] In 1987, Nurse and his postdoctoral worker Melanie Lee found the human homologue CDK1.[7][6] He joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in 1984, later becoming its Director General in 1996.[8]

Nurse married Anne Teresa Talbott in 1971, and they have two daughters.[9] Only after reaching his 50s did Nurse learn that the person he believed to be his sister was actually his biological mother.[10] The UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation, which later became the Francis Crick Institute, had Nurse as its first Director and Chief Executive starting in 2011.[11]

What the cited sources add

The Guardian interview reports that Nurse failed French O level six times before being accepted to university.[12] Nurse told the Guardian that his green card application was rejected despite his Nobel prize, university presidency, and knighthood.[13] He discovered the truth about his parentage only after applying for a full birth certificate following that rejection.[13] The Nobel Prize illustrated lecture states that the 2001 prize was awarded jointly to Hartwell, Hunt, and Nurse for discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle.[14]

The EMBO profile lists Nurse as an EMBO Member elected in 1987 and notes his laboratory studies cell cycle controls using fission yeast.[15]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Nurse, "In answer to questions about the Francis Crick Institute", The Lancet, 2012, p. 2427–8; Nurse, "Building better institutions", Science, 2013, p. 10; ; "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001", The Nobel Prize (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Sir Paul Nurse: 'I looked at my birth certificate. That was not my mother's name'", TheGuardian.com, 9 August 2014; ; Our Alumni – website of the University of Birmingham; Nurse, "The spatial and temporal organisation of amino acid pools in Candida utilis", University of East Anglia, 1974 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Sir Paul Nurse: 'I looked at my birth certificate. That was not my mother's name'", TheGuardian.com, 9 August 2014 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Al-Khalili, "Paul Nurse - life and work", The Life Scientific (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Nurse, "Genetic control of the cell division cycle in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe", Molecular & General Genetics, 1976, p. 167–178; Nurse, "Wee beasties", Nature, 2004, p. 557 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001 - Illustrated Lecture", The Nobel Prize (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lee, "Complementation used to clone a human homologue of the fission yeast cell cycle control gene cdc2", Nature, 1987, p. 31–35 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Sample, "Paul Nurse talks to Ian Sample about money, moustaches, and his move to Manhattan", The Guardian, 17 September 2003 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Emily Nurse's; McKie, "Paul Nurse: Home truths for the gene genius", theguardian.com, 2010-10-24; ; including the Nobel Lecture Nobel Lecture 9 December 2001 Controlling the Cell Cycle (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Sir Paul Nurse: 'I looked at my birth certificate. That was not my mother's name'", TheGuardian.com, 9 August 2014; Andrew Anthony, "Sir Paul Nurse: 'The UK has taken a leap several decades into the past'", The Guardian, 15 August 2020; Professor Turi King, "My Family's Secret: Sir Paul Nurse", 2023-12-18 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  11. Wikipedia, "Paul Nurse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Project Press Release", UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation web site, September 2016 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  12. Sample, "Paul Nurse talks to Ian Sample about money, moustaches, and his move to Manhattan", The Guardian, 17 September 2003. facts only, no text reused. theguardian.com
  13. Andrew Anthony, "Sir Paul Nurse: 'The UK has taken a leap several decades into the past'", The Guardian, 15 August 2020. facts only, no text reused. theguardian.com
  14. "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001 - Illustrated Lecture", The Nobel Prize. facts only, no text reused. nobelprize.org
  15. "EMBO profile: Paul Nurse", people.embo.org. facts only, no text reused. people.embo.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Paul Nurse (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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