What is Life? by Sir Paul Nurse
This year’s Research Day Thomas Young Lecture will be delivered by Sir Paul Nurse OM CH FRS FMedSci HonFREng HonFBA MAE, Director of the Francis Crick Institute.
The lecture will take place from 5pm to 6pm on Wednesday 6 December 2023 in The Curve Lecture Theatre (Hunter Wing, L0).
Register now to attend Research Day and the Thomas Young Lecture.
About Sir Paul Nurse
Paul Nurse is a geneticist and cell biologist who works on how the eukaryotic cell cycle is controlled. His major work has been on the cyclin dependent protein kinases and how they regulate cell reproduction. He is Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, Chancellor of the University of Bristol, and has served as President of the Royal Society, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK and President of Rockefeller University.
He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and has received the Albert Lasker Award, the Gairdner Award, the Louis Jeantet Prize and the Royal Society's Royal and Copley Medals. He was knighted in 1999 made a Companion of Honour and awarded the Order of Merit in 2022 for services to science and medicine in the UK and abroad, received the Legion d'honneur in 2003 from France, and the Order of the Rising Sun in 2018 from Japan.
He served for 15 years on the UK Council of Science and Technology, advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and was a Chief Scientific Advisor for the European Union. In 2020 he wrote “What is Life” which has been published in 22 countries.
Paul flies gliders and vintage aeroplanes and has been a qualified bush pilot. He also likes the theatre, hill-walking, going to museums and art galleries, and running very slowly.
About the Thomas Young Lecture
Thomas Young (1773-1829) was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a polymath who worked on subjects as diverse as optics, mechanics and physiology as well as deciphering the Rosetta Stone.
In years past, speakers have included Peter Piot, Keith Peters, David Weatherall, Douglas Black, Margaret Turner-Warwick, David Nabarro, Ann Johnson and Professor Sir Mark Caulfield.
The intention is for the lecture to appeal to a broad audience of mainly researchers but also students at all levels, professional staff and Council so the best mix is some basic science with some more general concepts around genomics/research more broadly.