Professor Kim Nasmyth FRS, Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at Oxford University, Fellow of Eton College and OE, has been awarded the highly prestigious 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences at a ceremony hosted by award winning actor Morgan Freeman, and held in NASA Ames Research Centre in California.
The Breakthrough Prizes, which were established in 2012, were founded and are sponsored by global entrepreneurs and philanthropists Sergey Brin (Google co-founder), Yuri and Julia Milner (DST Global), Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (Facebook), Anne Wojcicki (23andMe), and Pony Ma (Tencent).
Selection Committees composed of previous Breakthrough Prize laureates choose the winners. Professor Nasmyth was awarded the prize for ‘elucidating the sophisticated mechanism that mediates the perilous separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division and thereby prevents genetic diseases such as cancer.’
Professor Nasmyth is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and a past recipient of the Louis-Jeantet Prize, Wittgenstein Prize and the Gairdner Foundation International Award, and is, therefore, no stranger to attracting awards for his pioneering work.
Eton is delighted that Professor Kim Nasmyth has been recognised by the award of the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and offers its heartfelt congratulations.
