31 Facts About Tim Hunt

Sir Richard Timothy Hunt was born on 19 February 1943 and is a British biochemist and molecular physiologist.

Tim Hunt was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse and Leland H Hartwell for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells.

At the age of eight, Tim Hunt was accepted into the Dragon School, where he first developed an interest in biology thanks to his science teacher, the German educator Gerd Sommerhoff.

Tim Hunt's PhD was supervised by Asher Korner and focused on haemoglobin synthesis in intact rabbit reticulocytes, and was awarded in 1968.

Tim Hunt regularly spent summers working at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which was popular with scientists for its advanced summer courses, and in particular, with those interested in the study of mitosis.

Tim Hunt was observing the eggs undergo cell division after fertilization.

Tim Hunt named the protein "cyclin" based on his observation of the cyclical changes in its levels.

Tim Hunt later demonstrated that cyclins were present in another sea urchin, Lytechinus pictus, as well as in Spisula clams.

Tim Hunt was aware that the discovery of cyclins was significant, but was initially unsure of how cyclins functioned in regard to cell division.

That same year, Tim Hunt defined the concept of short linear motifs, parts of protein sequences that mediate interactions with other proteins.

In 1993, the book The Cell Cycle: An Introduction, which Tim Hunt co-authored along with Andrew Murray, was published by Oxford University Press.

Tim Hunt had his own laboratory at the Clare Hall Laboratories until the end of 2010, and remains an Emeritus Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute.

Tim Hunt is a member of the Advisory Council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering.

Tim Hunt has served on the Selection Committee for the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine.

In 2010, Tim Hunt joined the Academic Advisory Board of the Austrian think tank Academia Superior, Institute for Future Studies.

Tim Hunt is a highly regarded colleague and mentor in the research community.

Tim Hunt believes that science benefits when power is given to young people, himself having been given full autonomy and authority at age 27.

At the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul in June 2015, Tim Hunt gave a impromptu toast at a lunch for female journalists and scientists.

Tim Hunt resigned from his honorary professorship at University College London after the university told him to; he resigned from several other research positions.

Tim Hunt apologised and stated that the remarks were in jest.

Tim Hunt said that they had been taken out of context, as the remarks had originally been reported without the words starting with "now seriously".

Tim Hunt stated he "did mean the part about having trouble with girls".

Some public figures and scientists, including some who had worked with Tim Hunt, suggested that the backlash against him was disproportionate.

Tim Hunt was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1991, his certificate of election reads:.

Tim Hunt subsequently cloned and sequenced cyclin cDNA from sea urchins and frogs and showed by elegant mRNA ablation experiments that cyclin translation is necessary for mitosis in frog embryos.

Tim Hunt has shown that cyclin is a subunit of the mitosis-promoting factor which regulates entry into mitosis.

Tim Hunt was elected a fellow of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998, and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1999.

Tim Hunt showed that cyclins are degraded periodically at each cell division, a mechanism proved to be of general importance for cell cycle control.

In 2003, Tim Hunt was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Tim Hunt was knighted in the 2006 Birthday Honours for his service to science.

Tim Hunt is married to the immunologist Mary Collins, who was provost of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, and is Director of the Blizard Institute Queen Mary University of London.