Sir Paul Maxime Nurse (born 25 January 1949) is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute.

[8] Nurse's mother went from London to Norwich and lived with relatives while awaiting Paul's birth (at the age of 18)[9] in order to hide illegitimacy.

In 2003, he became president of Rockefeller University in New York City[19] where he continued work on the cell cycle of fission yeast.

In 2011 Nurse became the first Director and Chief Executive of the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation,[20] now the Francis Crick Institute.

[28] In 2015, he was elected a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,[29] and won the 10th annual Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research, in Ottawa, Canada.

Nurse married Anne Teresa (née Talbott) in 1971; they have two daughters – Sarah, who works for ITV, and Emily,[44] a physicist based at University College London and CERN.

[46] In September 2020, he was a co-author on a letter in Nature alongside the former prime minister Gordon Brown highlighting the importance of EU funding in the fight against COVID-19.

[47] As an undergraduate student at Birmingham, Nurse sold Socialist Worker, and participated in an occupation of the vice-chancellor's office.

[50] He was alarmed that this could happen in the US, a world leader in science, "the home of Benjamin Franklin, Richard Feynman and Jim Watson".

[50] Nurse has written that "we need to emphasise why the scientific process is such a reliable generator of knowledge with its respect for evidence, for scepticism, for consistency of approach, for the constant testing of ideas.

[50] In August 2014, Nurse was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.

[51] Nurse believes that scientists should speak out about science in public affairs and challenge politicians who support policies based on pseudoscience.