Café Scientifique - Bishops Stortford

Monday March 31st 2008

How to Win a Nobel Prize!

By Sir Tim Hunt

(local Nobel Prize Winner)

Tim was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Leland Hartwell and Sir Paul Nurse for their discoveries regarding cell cycle regulation

Sir Richard Timothy (Tim) Hunt is a Fellow of the Royal Society

Sir Tim Hunt, FRS, talked about the journey of discovery that led to him receiving the highest accolade of achievement in the world of science - The Nobel Prize.

Tim received his award in ‘Physiology or Medicine’ in 2001 for studies on "Key regulators of the cell cycle" (according to the Nobel citation).
In his autobiography Tim talks of the pleasures of doing science such as “…..trying to make sense of unfamiliar territory and the discussions with the other authors providing an even more intense pleasure of learning new things”.

But he goes on to say “… none of these pleasures, great and satisfying though they are, match the joy of discovery”.

Tim described first hand, the story behind the discoveries that have made a major contribution to understanding how cells can make copies of themselves at the molecular level. Such knowledge is essential for progressing many areas of biology and the discoveries may in the long term also open new principles for cancer therapy.