‘Lots of people don’t want to do it’: Paul Nurse on his controversial second term as Royal Society president

The Nobel prize winner discusses claims of a ‘boys’ club’, Elon Musk’s fellowship and rightwing attacks on science

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aul Nurse is a turn up for the books. A Nobel prize-winning geneticist, former director of the Francis Crick Institute and erstwhile head of Rockefeller University in the US, his CV marks him out as one of this generation’s most eminent scientific figures.

But his presidency of the Royal Society, a position he has taken up for a second time, makes him rarer still. No other scientist in centuries has had a second term at the head of the academy.

The unusual nature of the appointment is not lost on Nurse, nor is the controversy it has attracted. “I’m old, I’m white, I’m a man, so everything’s against me. And so I didn’t apply, but I was nominated anonymously by a number of people, apparently,” he says.