The Nobel Prize winning scientist is the former president of Rockefeller University, the highly respected biomedical research center on the Upper East Side, and current director and CEO of the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation.

The son of a chauffeur and a house cleaner, British-born Nurse initially didn't go to college because he lacked the basic foreign language qualifications needed to enroll. Instead, he worked as a technician at a Guinness beer factory until a genetics professor at a nearby university noticed his application and helped him bypass the language requirement. Nurse took an interest in zoology and cell cycles as an undergrad before enrolling in a PhD program in genetics. He focused his research on fission yeast (which plays an important role in cancer research) during the '70s and '80s, and by the time he joined Oxford as chair of the department of microbiology in 1988, he'd already become an internationally recognized expert on the subject. He went on to become director of research at the Cancer Research Fund, the largest volunteer-sustained cancer research organization in the world, before sharing the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work on "molecular mechanisms that regulate the cell cycle and the process by which a cell copies its genetic material and divides into two cells." He was tapped for his current position as president of Rockefeller University in 2003. A skilled fundraiser for the institution, he continues to work on fission yeast at Rockefeller University but has crossed the pond again as the first director of the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation. [Image via Getty]