Sir Paul is the Nobel Prize-winning British biologist who discovered the gene which controls biological cell division.
Currently President of the prestigious US-based Rockefeller University, he was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with two other scientists, for identifying cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) as the key regulator molecule controlling the process by which cells make copies of themselves.
His discovery was an important advance in the universal quest to understand the growth and development of cancer.
Dr (Sir Paul) Nurse is also renowned for speaking out publicly on the need for science to engage in a dialogue with the broad community, declaring that scientists need to earn the trust and confidence of the public if they are to retain their “licence to operate.”
“Scientists should become more engaged at grass roots level, not just with … intellectual elites, but with all parts of society in all parts of the country,” Sir Paul wrote in an editorial published recently in Cell, a leading international biomedical journal.
And he told the BBC Program The Open Mind: “I’d even say science is key to democracy, because science touches so much in all our political decisions that unless we can somehow engage this difficult subject with the general public, I think there are serious issues … not only for scientists, but for democracy as a whole.”
Sir Paul will address both scientists and their public at The Nancy Millis Lecture at La Trobe University’s Hooper Lecture Theatre, Melbourne, Bundoora campus, on Tuesday 3 July. His topic will be: The Great Ideas of Biology. Sir Paul is the eighth distinguished biologist to deliver La Trobe University’s annual Nancy Millis Lecture, in honour of the eminent scientist Emeritus Professor Nancy Millis, a former La Trobe Chancellor.
Previous presenters were: Professors Peter Doherty (Nobel Laureate immunologist), Sir Gustav Nossal (internationally celebrated immunologist, medical scientist and former Director of Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research), John Shine (the “father of cloning” and former executive Director of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, University of New South Wales), Adrienne Clarke (world-renowned plant geneticist and Laureate Professor School of Botany, University of Melbourne), Miroslav Radman (Croatian-born molecular biologist and co-founder of the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences, who specialises in DNA repair), Suzanne Cory (Director of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Joint Head of WEHI’s Molecular Genetics of Cancer Division, and Professor of Medical Biology, University of Melbourne) and Ian Frazer (Clinical Immunologist and 2006 Australian of the Year for research leading to the creation of a vaccine against cervical cancer.)
Professor Millis, a specialist in microbiology and bio-chemistry, was only the fourth woman appointed as a Professor at the University of Melbourne, and one of five Australian scientists honoured by their inclusion as one of the “Australian Science Legends” commemorated in a series of Australian postage stamps in 2002.
She was Chair of the Commonwealth Government Recombinant DNA Monitoring Committee and served on various boards of management including the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, The Australian Water Resources Advisory Committee, the CRC for Freshwater Ecology, the Council of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences, and the National Commission for UNESCO.
Thursday, 28 June 20072007 Nancy Millis LectureThe Great Ideas of Biology - according to Paul Nurse, one of the great biologists Guests at La Trobe University’s 2007 Nancy Millis Lecture are promised a stimulating encounter with this year’s guest lecturer Sir Paul Nurse, once dubbed the “David Beckham of Science”, and recognised as one of the greatest biological researchers of our time
The lecture will begin at 6pm, Tuesday, 3 July in the Hooper Lecture Theatre at La Trobe University’s Bundoora campus. It is free and open to the public.
Bookings: Ms Margaret Botterill, Faculty of Science, Technology and Engineering, La Trobe University
Tel: 9479 2059 Email: m.botterill@latrobe.edu.au