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JUNE 2005

Nobel Laureates Around the Nation
Interview with Nobel Laureate Dr. Paul Nurse, President, Rockefeller University
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.

Education Update (EU): As the 2001 Nobel Prize winner for medicine (along with Dr. Tim Hunt and Dr Leland Hartwell, an American), as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and at the time as chief executive of Cancer Research in the UK, what considerations led to your leaving the UK to take up the position of president of The Rockefeller University?
Dr. Paul Nurse (PN): Rockefeller University obviously has an enormous reputation, and research conducted here has had a huge impact on science and medicine. For example, the discovery of blood groups, that a virus can cause cancer, that DNA is the chemical basis of heredity, are but three of the many discoveries that have helped improve human life. I’d like to help continue that tradition into the 21st century by attracting the best talent and encourage young people to take on the most challenging scientific problems.

EU: You have stated to recent graduates that “science transcends all cultural barriers within the world” but recent studies in this country point to a growing fundamentalism on the part of those who would excise Darwin (et al.) from school texts and require teachers in some states to give equal weight to creationism. What would you say to educators about this growing trend and is there similar expression in the UK?
PN: In the U.K. and Europe, there is real mistrust among the public about genetically modified foods, which I don’t observe in the U.S. In contrast, in the U.S. the disturbing pressure to give evolution, creationism and intelligent design equal weight is not an issue in the U.K. and Europe.

An important aspect of both problems is lack of public understanding of science and of good engagement between the public and scientists.  Sometimes minority groups with rather extreme views end up having an inappropriate impact on these complex issues.

EU: Reasonably, what might be done to encourage a more scientifically literate general public at a time when science seems increasingly so complex and specialized?
PN: Scientists have a responsibility to the public that goes beyond their science. Scientists must engage the public in a dialogue so that people can understand and make informed decisions about scientific advances that affect society, such as genetically modified foods or embryonic stem cell research. This dialogue should include public policy makers.  Scientists need to listen better to the general public.

EU: We have read that your own achievements are all the more remarkable for your having come from modest beginnings. Who were the major influences (or mentors) in your life? You spoke of Imperial Cancer Research Fund taking you on “as a young scientist with a mission to understand the biology of cancer.” What prompted this sense of “mission?”
PN:
Very early in my education, while I was at grammar school, I had a wonderful biology teacher who encouraged his pupils to study natural history and to do real experiments. As an undergraduate, I had a tutor who was hugely stimulating and entertaining, and although sometimes wrong was always wrong in an interesting way. He taught me the value of the alternative view.  During my Ph.D. studies, my supervisor was an enormous influence. He was a great experimentalist and I rapidly learned the need for good experiments to make any progress at all in a research project. And my postdoc supervisor was pivotal for my entire research career. He gave me both complete support and total freedom.

I emphasize my mentors at all stages of my career because they enthused in me the passion to do high quality science, to honestly pursue the truth wherever that might lead. This is what I have tried to do with my studies of cell biology and cancer.

EU: Do your new duties as president of The Rockefeller University interfere in what we have heard are some of your abiding interests—flying and motorcycle riding?
PN: Unfortunately, flying and motorcycling have taken a backseat to my duties as president, but I still find time to keep them up and to pursue my more relaxing hobby of looking at the stars with a telescope. #

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