Sir Paul Nurse OM CH FRS is a geneticist who works on what controls the division and shape of cells. He was Professor of Microbiology at the University of Oxford, CEO of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Cancer Research UK and President of Rockefeller University New York. He is currently Director and Chief Executive of the Francis Crick Institute.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2001 and the Royal Society Copley Medal in 2005. In 1989 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and in 1995 he received the Royal Society Royal Medal and became a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1998 and was knighted in 1999. He was awarded the French Legion d’Honneur in 2002, and the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun in 2018.
He was a member of the Council for Science and Technology advising Prime Ministers from 2000 to 2015. In 2013 he became the winner of the Albert Einstein World Award of Science conferred by the World Cultural Council, and since 2017 has been a Chief Scientific Advisor of the European Commission.
Paul Nurse has received over 70 honorary degrees and fellowships including those from universities where he was trained – Birmingham, East Anglia, Edinburgh and Sussex – as well as Oxford and Cambridge. He is also a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and of the British Academy.
In this lecture he considers the question ‘What is Life?’ by discussing five great ideas of biology, ranging from the ‘Cell’ to ‘the Logic of Life’. By considering these concepts, a direction of travel is set towards a definition of life.
Members: Free, Online (please book to receive a link) or Victoria Hall (doors open 7.30pm)
Guests: £10, Online (please book to receive a link) or £10 Victoria Hall (pay on the door – you will be admitted to the Hall at 7.50pm if there is room)
Please book to watch online by 1pm on the day of the event
You do not book to attend in the Victoria Hall
Drinks are served in the Members’ Room after the lecture