Paul Nurse

Paul Nurse's parents were from Norfolk. Nurse was born in Wembley, northeast London. He graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1970, followed by a doctorate from the University of East Anglia (Norwich) and was awarded his Ph.D. in 1973.

In 1976, Nurse identified the yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) cdc2 gene. The gene controlled the cell cycle: the transition from G1 phase to synthetic S phase and from G2 phase to mitosis. In 1987, Ners discovered a homologous gene in human CDK1 encoding a cyclin-dependent kinase.

In 1984, Nurse moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Foundation (now the Cancer Research Foundation UK). From 1988 to 1993 he was head of the Department of Microbiology at Oxford University, and then returned to the Cancer Foundation, where he became director in 1996. Since 2003 he became President of Rockefeller University (New York), where he continues his work on the cell cycle in yeast.