Sir Paul Nurse, president of Rockefeller University, was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland H. Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt for their discoveries regarding cell cycle regulation. Nurse's work in biochemistry and joint discovery of the gene that controls cell division have been instrumental in developing new treatments and medicines for cancer. As well as being a Nobel Laureate, he has received numerous awards and honors including a Royal Medal, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the French Légion d´Honneur and the Copley Medal. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989 and a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1995. In April of this year, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2003, Nurse delivered the annual Romanes Lecture at the University of Oxford, in which he discusses the history and significance of four of the great ideas of biology - the cell, the gene, evolution by natural selection, and life as chemistry - and outlined a fifth idea, biological organization, which is of increasing interest to biologists.

In October 2006, Nurse visited the National Humanities Center where he lead a seminar discussion on the epistemological differences between the humanities and sciences.