Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse presents biology-themed Racker Lectures

Paul Nurse, president of Rockefeller University and 2001 Nobel laureate, will present the 2004 Efraim Racker Lectures Thursday and Friday, Nov. 4 and 5. At 8 p.m. Nov. 4 in Call Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, he will speak on "Great Ideas in Biology." A reception will follow. At 4 p.m. Friday in Room G10 Biotechnology Building, he will speak on "Cell Cycle Control."

Nurse's basic research focuses on the molecular machinery that drives cell division. Through this process, also called the cell cycle, cells copy themselves and multiply to form complex organisms. The cell cycle is crucial to survival, because the human body consistently must replenish many of its trillions of cells. Each new cell is a product of the cell cycle. Nurse shared the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology in 2001 with Leland H. Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt. The three scientists were honored for advancing scientific understanding of the cell cycle.

Among Nurse's research accomplishments was the identification of corresponding genes for a key regulator of the cell cycle in both yeast and human cells. His discovery of the regulator molecule, called CDK (cyclin dependent kinase), in cells of both organisms revealed that CDK is essential to life in both simple and complex organisms, and that it was conserved over hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

On Sept. 1, 2003, Nurse succeeded acting president and Rockefeller scientist Thomas P. Sakmar, M.D., as president of Rockefeller University. Besides leading the university, Nurse heads one of its major laboratories, the Laboratory of Yeast Genetics and Cell Biology.

The Racker Lecture series was established in 1992 seeking to bring to the campus eminent scientists who have made seminal contributions to biology and medicine and who can interest and inform the general public as well as scientists in the area. The series honors Efraim "Ef" Racker, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1966 as the Albert Einstein Professor of Biochemistry and chair of the section of biochemistry in the newly created Division of Biological Sciences, and who died in 1991. Along with his scientific accomplishments, Racker was an accomplished artist, and the series was funded by the sale of his paintings as well as private donations. Nurse will be the fifth Nobel Prize winner to speak in the series.