9th Rodney Porter Memorial Lecture

Prof. Kim Nasmyth, FRS
(Whitley Professor of Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry, Oxford)

Kim Nasmyth joined the Department of Biochemistry in January 2006 holding the position of the Whitley Chair and on 1st October 2006 took over the position of Head of the Department. He was a PhD student in Mitchison's lab in Edinburgh (1974-77), a post doc in Seattle Washington (1978-1980), a Robertson research fellow at Cold Spring for molecular biology in Cambridge (1982-87) before moving to the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (I.M.P.), where he was a senior scientist from 1988-1997 and Director from 1997-2006. He is on the scientific advisory boards of numerous research institutes and companies and has been heavily involved in establishing a new exhibition about Mendel's life and work at St Thomas's monastery in Brno. He has recently had an important role in establishing the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) next to the IMP.

His scientific work has addressed the mechanisms by which genes are turned on and off during development, how DNA replication is controlled, and how chromosomes ensure their segregation during mitosis and meiosis. It has been recognized by several awards including the Boveri award for Molecular Cancer Genetics (2003), the Croonian lecture/Medal of the Royal Society (2002), the Austrian Wittgenstein prize (1999), the Louis Jeantet prize for Medicine (1997), the Unilever Science prize (1996), and the FEBS Silver Medal (1995). He is a fellow of the Royal Society (1989), a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (1999), and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1999).