Twenty-two years ago, I was in a room in London talking about setting up a museum to celebrate the monk Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics. Someone came in and gave me a note from my lab saying I should turn on my mobile phone. A heavily distorted message had been left, and it sounded like a journalist asking me for comments on the Nobel prize in medicine, which he said had been awarded that day to my friend Tim Hunt. I listened to it again and then a third time. Was he also saying I had won it too? I returned to the room and said something that in retrospect must have sounded very strange: “I must go now because I think I may have won a Nobel prize.” It was true, I had won it, together with Tim and Leland Hartwell, a scientist from Seattle, for our work on how cells control their division.
The prize changed our lives. It is the one scientific prize everyone knows. Suddenly you become a public figure being asked to do all sorts of things: to give lectures, quite often on topics you know little about; to sit on committees and reviews you are not always well qualified to be on; to visit countries you have barely heard of; to sign endless petitions on what are probably good causes, but you never know. It is like having a whole new extra job, with upwards of 500 requests a year. It is impostor syndrome on steroids.
A big problem is that people think you have something sensible to say about nearly everything. Over time it can become dangerous, as you start to believe that perhaps you do know about nearly everything. This is a disease I have called “Nobelitis”, which I sincerely hope I have managed to avoid, largely because of the efforts of my family, friends and colleagues in keeping me in order.
Of course, it is fun too. You meet lots of people, many who are interesting and impressive as well as being famous: prime ministers, presidents, royals, artists, authors, actors, musicians and highly accomplished scientists I had admired from afar for decades. You get to visit some extraordinary places. My most exciting trip was deep into Antarctica, to the New Zealand research station Scott Base, something I had wanted to do since I was a schoolboy, following in the footsteps of the explorers Capt Scott and Lt Shackleton.
A recent study suggests that in general the extra commitments that Nobel winners and MacArthur fellowship recipients take on result in fewer papers and citations after their awards. There may be some truth to this given the extra demands on one’s time, but of course prestigious awards also allow new projects and research to be undertaken.
What effects did the Nobel prize have on my subsequent career and work? It has certainly helped me to get scientific leadership positions. Within a year of getting the prize I was offered and accepted the presidency of Rockefeller University in New York. I suspect it was also important to the fellows of the Royal Society, the UK science academy, when they elected me as their president. The society traditionally elects accomplished researchers, which greatly helps it to be taken seriously when it gives scientific advice. For me, being president was on a par with getting the Nobel prize. I have no doubt that the prize also helped me to become director of the Francis Crick Institute.
Having the prize also helps to get things done. For example, I have been involved in the merging of two separate cancer research charities to form Cancer Research UK; in pushing back on ideologically motivated climate change denialists; and in writing two reviews of UK science for successive Conservative governments (despite being a known Labour party supporter). We were able to get the Crick Institute in place despite significant opposition from some scientists and policy commentators, partly through my access to the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, and later the chancellor, George Osborne, both of whom were very supportive. And it has helped me support causes I care deeply about. President Zelenskiy invited me to Kyiv earlier this year to see schools destroyed by the Russian invasion. I became an ambassador for Ukraine education and science to help raise money for schools in that shattered country.
What about my research after the prize? Doing high-quality science depends on high-quality researchers. When you are young and starting a new field, it is not so difficult to attract very good research colleagues because people like working with new researchers in exciting areas, but as you get older that can become more difficult. Having a Nobel does help. I have just started three excellent new PhD students. It is a privilege for me to be able to pursue curiosity-driven research at this late stage of my career.
However, one thing I am glad to say that the Nobel prize did not influence was peer review from my fellow scientists, assessing the suitability of my own research for publication, and my grant applications for funding. My rejection rates have remained essentially the same before and after the prize. And that, of course, is exactly how it should be.
Sir Paul Nurse is director of the Francis Crick Institute and chancellor of the University of Bristol. He was awarded the Nobel prize for physiology or medicine in 2001 and the Royal Society Copley medal in 2005
