The 2001's Nobel Prize of Medicine, Sir Paul Nurse, will be in charge of the scientific meeting that the University of Oviedo will present tomorrow, 19th of October, at the Auditorium at 19:30h. Under the title: "El universo en una cáscara de nuez. Los grandes retos de la ciencia del futuro" (Universe in a nutshell. The great challenges of future science), Nurse, chairman of the Royal Society, will exchange his opinions about the future of science with the chairman of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones científicas (Higher Council of Scientific Research), Rafael Rodrigo, moderated by the professor of Microbiology from the Complutense University, César Nombela, also member of the Príncipe de Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Research's jury.

The Cultural Centre of University Extension, LAUDEO (located at the Historical Building) will host a double date: the official opening, at 19:00h, of the "Transacciones. España en la historia de la Royal Society" exhibition, which will have restricted access. This event will be attended by Sir Paul Nurse, representatives from academic institutions and exhibition's sponsors of the institution which this year has been awarded with the Príncipe de Asturias Prize of Communication and Humanities. At 19:30h, the scientific meeting will start until reaching the Auditorium's full capacity.

Sir Paul Maxime Nurse (1949, London) is a British biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize of Medicine in 2011, jointly with Leland H. Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt, due to their discoveries about the role of cyclins and cyclin-dependent kinases in the cell cycle. In 1970, he graduated in the University of Birmingham and in 1973, he got his PhD in the University of East Anglia. As result of a project which he began in 1976, Paul Nurse identified the cdc2 gene in the Schizosaccharomyces pombe yeast. This gene controls the cell cycle's progression from the G1 phase to the S phase, as well as the change between G2 phases and M (mitosis). In 1987, Nurse was able to identify the human homologue of cdc2, called CDK1, which codifies a cyclin- dependent kinase. In 1984, Nurse joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), where he remained until 1988, date in which he started to manage the Microbiology Department of the University of Oxford.

In 2003, Paul Nurse became the president of the Rockefeller University of New York, where he has kept on researching about the fission's yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) cellular cycle. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Nurse has been given several distinctions and honors. In 1989, he was named member of the Royal Society of England, institution which he chairs now. Next Friday, he will collect the Príncipe de Asturias Prize of Communication and Humanities at the Campoamor theatre of Oviedo.