Tim Hunt
(Biology)

Dr Tim Hunt is a Principal Scientist at Cancer Research UK, Clare Hall Laboratories, in South Mimms, Herts (15 miles north of central London). Dr Hunt was born in 1943 and lived in Oxford until he went up to Cambridge to read Natural Sciences. He did his Ph.D. in the Department of Biochemistry entitled “The Synthesis of Haemoglobin”. He spent almost 30 years altogether in Cambridge, mostly working on the control of protein synthesis, with spells in the USA; he was a postdoctoral Fellow at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1968-70 and he spent summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole from 1977 until 1985, both teaching and doing research. In 1982, he discovered cyclins, which turned out to be “Key Regulator(s) of the Cell Cycle”, and led to a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001 together with Lee Hartwell and Paul Nurse.

Dr Hunt has helped write two books: together with Andrew Murray, he wrote “The Cell Cycle: An Introduction”, and with John Wilson composed “Molecular Biology of the Cell: A Problems Approach” to accompany the textbook by Alberts et al. The Problems are now in their 3rd edition. Apart from researching, writing and lecturing, Dr Hunt finds himself on several advisory panels. He was a member of the EMBO panel that reviewed Cell and Molecular Biology in Austria and chaired the EMBO review panel for the French “Genopole” system. He was on the Scientific Advisory Board of the IMP in Vienna, and is a member of the advisory board of laboratories in Cambridge, Dundee, Edinburgh, London and Oxford. He recently chaired the Life Sciences Panel for selection of European Young Investigators under the aegis of the European Science Foundation. Dr Hunt is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, a Member of EMBO, a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of Academia Europaea.

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