Nobel Prize winner to deliver annual science lecture

In his role as the President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul will examine three of the great ideas of biology - the gene theory; the theory of evolution by natural selection; and the proposal that the cell is the fundamental unit of all life.

Sir Paul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt for their work on the genetics of the cell cycle – a discovery crucial to the understanding of cancer.

Using genetic and biochemical methods, they identified the molecules CDK and cyclin that control the cell cycle in eukaryotic organisms. These fundamental discoveries have a profound impact on many aspects of biology and medicine.

It is almost a year since Sir Paul became President of the Royal Society, a post whose previous holders include Sir Christopher Wren, Samuel Pepys and Sir Isaac Newton.

Sir Paul’s lecture is a joint initiative by the University's Institute for Advanced Studies, the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and the Sir Anthony Epstein Lectures. It is free and begins at 6pm in the Great Hall in Wills Memorial Building.

The annual Sir Anthony Epstein Lecture recognises the achievements of outstanding scientists in the fields of cancer biology, infection and immunology. Sir Anthony Epstein was Professor of Pathology at the University of Bristol from 1968 to 1982 and one of the founding fathers of human tumour virus research. 

He discovered Epstein-Barr virus in 1964, the first human tumour virus, and subsequently made major contributions to the understanding of tumour virus biology and ultimately to the development of vaccines that might control these virus-associated cancers. 

• The lecture is free and open to anyone but booking is required online.