The Rafael del Pino Foundation together with the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) organised the Keynote Lecture "Making science work" delivered by Paul Maxime Nurse.
Sir Paul Nurse is a British geneticist and biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001, jointly with Leland H. Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt, for their discoveries concerning the role of cyclins and cyclin-dependent kinases in the cell cycle.
In 1984, Professor Nurse joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), where he remained until 1988, when he became Head of the Department of Microbiology at Oxford University. Following his time at Oxford, Nurse returned to the ICRF in 1993, this time as Director of Research until 1996 when he was promoted to the post of Director General (the ICRF was renamed Cancer Research UK in 2002).
In 2003, Sir Paul Nurse becomes president of Rockefeller University in New York, where he still maintains a laboratory for his research on the fission yeast cell cycle.
In 2010, he became the 60th president of the Royal Society in the UK. He became director of the Francis Crick Institute in London in 2011, but retains a laboratory at The Rockefeller University. He became director of the Francis Crick Institute in London in 2011.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Nurse has received numerous distinctions and honours: he is an external associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, has been awarded the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, has been made a Knight of the British Crown and was awarded France's Legion d'Honneur and the Copley Medal.
On 21 October 2011, he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities representing the Royal Society as its President, accompanied by the Director of the Royal Society, from Don Felipe de Borbón, Prince of Asturias.
