Sir Paul Nurse, a geneticist who uses fission yeast as a model system, shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt for fundamental discoveries concerning control of the cell cycle.

Paul Nurse was elected Rockefeller University’s ninth President in 2003. Prior to that he served as Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, the world’s largest cancer research organization outside the United States. In 2010, he became the first Director and Chief Executive of the Francis Crick Institute in London and in addition for 5 years was President of the Royal Society.

Nurse was elected a Trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2005.