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Friday Evening Lecture Series
08/01/08 - Glassman Lecture
"The Great Ideas of Biology"
Dr. Paul Nurse, President, The Rockefeller University
Introduction by Sir Tim Hunt, Cancer Research UK
 Download the video
Lecture Abstract:
Three of the ideas of biology are the gene theory, the theory of evolution by natural selection, and the proposal that the cell is the fundamental unit of all life. When considering the question of what is life these ideas come together, because the special way cells reproduce provides the conditions by which natural selection takes place allowing living organisms to evolve. A fourth idea is that the organization of chemistry within the cell provides explanations for life’s phenomena. A new idea is the nature of biological self organization on which living cells and organisms process information and acquire specific forms.
Paul Nurse, FRS, who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, became president of The Rockefeller University in September 2003. He had previously served as chief executive of Cancer Research UK, the largest cancer research organization in the world outside the United States. Dr. Nurse is noted for his discoveries about the molecular machinery that regulates the cell cycle, the process by which a cell copies its genetic material and then divides to form two cells. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Dr. Nurse has received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Royal Society’s Wellcome, Royal and Copley medals amongst other scientific awards. A fellow of the Royal Society, he is a founding member of the U.K. Academy of Medical Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He was knighted in 1999 and received France’s Légion d’Honneur in 2002. Dr. Nurse plays an active role in science and society issues and makes regular TV appearances including as a co-host for a science series on PBS.
Tim Hunt will introduce Dr. Nurse. Dr. Hunt is a Principal Scientist at Cancer Research UK. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1968 and later was a postdoctoral fellow at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He spent summers at the MBL from 1977 until 1985, both teaching in the MBL's Embryology and Physiology courses and doing research. In 1982, he discovered cyclins, key regulators of the cell cycle. This led to a 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine that he shared with Lee Hartwell and Paul Nurse. Dr. Hunt is a fellow of the Royal Society, a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a member of EMBO, a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Academia Europaea. He was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen in 2006 for his services to science.
About the Glassman Lecture:
The Glassman Lecture is held in honor of the late Harold N. Glassman who left a generous bequest to the MBL which resulted in the establishment of the Harold N. Glassman fund, the income from which is used to support an annual Friday Evening Lecture on an important topic in biological research. |
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