Tim Hunt

Sir Richard Timothy Hunt , (born 19 February 1943 in Neston, Cheshire), is an English biochemist. He is usually known as Tim Hunt.

Hunt shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on cell division.
The prize was shared with Paul Nurse and Leland H. Hartwell. They had discovered the molecules which control cell division.

Cyclins are proteins that play a key role in regulating the cell-division cycle. Hunt found that cyclins begin to be synthesised after eggs are fertilised. He also found that cyclins are present in vertebrate cells, where they also regulate the cell cycle.

 Early life 
At the age of eight he was accepted into the Dragon School, where he first developed an interest in biology thanks to his German teacher, Gerd Sommerhoff.

When he was fourteen he moved to Magdalen College School, Oxford, where the science prizes now bear his name.

 Career 
In 1961, Hunt was accepted into Clare College, Cambridge to study natural sciences, graduating in 1964 and immediately beginning work in the university Department of Biochemistry.

He finished his PhD in 1968 and went to New York to work on protein synthesis. Tiny amounts of glutathione inhibited protein synthesis in reticulocytes (immature red blood cells), and tiny amounts of RNA killed the synthesis altogether. After returning to Cambridge he continued work on substances which started or inhibited protein synthesis.

In 1982 at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, he used the sea urchin (Arbacia punctulata) egg as his model organism. He discovered the cyclin molecule. 

Hunt found that cyclins are present in vertebrate cells where they regulate the cell cycle. His group showed that cyclins bind and activate a family of protein kinases. One of these had been identified as a crucial cell cycle regulator by Paul Nurse.

In 1990 he began work at Imperial Cancer Research Fund.Now known as the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute in the United Kingdom.  In 1998 he was elected a member of the Academia Europaea. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland Hartwell and Paul Nurse for their work on cell division.Nobelprize.org – Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001 Other honours followed, and he was knighted by the Queen in 2006.

 Personal life 
Hunt is married to Mary Collins. The couple have two daughters.

 Other websites 
 Biographical information and videos (presentations and other) from Wilsede Science Connections
  – web page with two-minute video interview with Hunt on the discovery of cyclin

 References 

Category:1943 births
Category:Living people
Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge
Category:British Nobel Prize winners
Category:English biochemists
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society
Category:Knights Bachelor
Category:Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners
Category:Members of Academia Europaea
Category:People from Cheshire