[4][8] His father Jan was doubly descended from King Charles II and founder of the billion dollar publishing company Argus Media.

Here he worked on the cell cycle alongside Paul Nurse[3] and his PhD thesis focused on the control of DNA replication in fission yeast.

[10] Max Birnstiel invited Nasmyth to join him at the then newly founded Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria, where he was director.

[12] Using temperature-sensitive mutants of the APC/C he found several genes which are required for sister chromatid cohesion[13] which we now know encode subunits of the cohesin complex.

[17] In 2006, Nasmyth left the IMP to become head of the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Oxford, a post he held until 2011.

[35] Nasmyth held a large number of shares in his fathers billion dollar company Argus Media until its purchase by General Atlantic in 2016.