October 2001: Sir Paul Nurse wins Nobel Prize for Medicine.

The 100th Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to Sir Paul Nurse, DG of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, for his ground-breaking work in the field. Strangely, newspaper reports of the award failed to mention his superb talk at the third Cafe Scientifique...

9th January 2001: "What is Cancer?"

Paul Nurse is one of Britain's most distinguished scientists today. His groundbreaking research has laid the foundation for a fundamental understanding of cancer. Since 1996, Sir Paul has also been director-general of the largest cancer research organization in the U.K., the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF).

"Cancer wreaks havoc in almost every part of the human body*" and has touched almost every family in Britain. Why then, despite so much time, effort and money, has it proved such a seemingly intractable problem? The understanding of cancer has been developed enormously over the last few decades and researchers have moved from "substantial ignorance to deep insight*" such that we are now in position to begin to answer the question "What is cancer?"