Research Triangle Park, N.C.  As part of its ongoing initiative to bring scientists and humanists together to discuss emerging issues in human understanding, the National Humanities Center will play host to Sir Paul Nurse on Monday, September 25th. Nurse, who has been called "the David Beckham of science," was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He will lead a seminar entitled, "What Is A Human?"

President of Rockefeller University, Sir Paul 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 Legion 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.

Nurse appears at the National Humanities Center as part of its ongoing initiative, Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity: The Human and the Humanities initiative (ASC). The ASC initiative, sponsored in part by Triangle research universities, facilitates dialogue between scientists and humanists on new conceptions of the human emerging from advances in contemporary science and technology.

For more information on Sir Paul Nurse's visit to the National Humanities Center or the ASC initiative, please call Don Solomon at (919) 549-0661 or e-mail him at dsolomon@nhc.rtp.nc.us.