You can catch Paul Nurse, head of the Cell Cycle Laboratory at Cancer Research UK, at this year鈥檚 Cheltenham Festival of Science, 4-8 June. He鈥檒l be talking about winning a Nobel prize for his part in the discovery of key regulators of the cell cycle.
Nurse is off to New York in November to become the ninth president of Rockefeller University. He鈥檚 reading Alistair Cooke鈥檚 America (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002) because 鈥淚 have never really understood America, but am trying to do so now, given that I am moving there later this year.鈥� He鈥檚 also reading about somewhere rather more familiar, London: The biography by Peter Ackroyd (Vintage, 2000), 鈥渁n account of London by someone who loves the place, as I do,鈥� he says. 鈥淧articularly good on sewers and all aspects of the low life,鈥� he adds.
Nurse鈥檚 鈥渟cientific read鈥� is Stephen Jay Gould鈥檚 The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Harvard, 2002): 鈥淎 heavy tome that interests me mainly because of its discussion of the constraints acting on evolutionary change.鈥�
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