First Nobel Laureate to visit the UTC! Sir Tim Hunt Part 1 (Intro)

This week we are delighted to be hosting a visit from Sir Tim Hunt at the UTC. Tim was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001, exactly 100 years after the first such prize was awarded. Tim shared the award with fellow British scientist Sir Paul Nurse and American Biologist Lee Hartwell. They all worked independently, using quite different approaches to unravel the key components of the eukaryotic cell cycle. The work that Tim carried out involves identifying the key cell cycle protein cyclin using sea urchins as an experimental model. Tim ( the Sir gets in the way sometimes!) was born on the Wirral, his father was an academic in Liverpool, but soon after relocated to Oxford where he eventually attended the well known Dragon School! Tim's early career was based at Cambridge, and saw him following his interest in protein synthesis. 

He visited a number of groups in New York during this time, and importantly the Marine Biology Labs at Woods Hole. It was here that the cyclin story began. This is a story paved with a series of elegant experiments and I shall take you through it in the second part.