In January 1949, Nass was born into a working-class family in England. His father was a mechanic and his mother was a cleaner. "There were basically no books at home." But at the age of eight, when he saw the Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 flying over London, he became fascinated with science. After graduating from high school, he was rejected by the university because he failed the French exam. Fortunately, a professor interceded to let him enter the university as an exception.

In p>197, Nass obtained a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from the University of Birmingham, England, and then transferred to the study of yeast genetics and cell biology. In 1973, he obtained a doctorate from the University of East Anglia. He used to work in the London laboratory and Oxford University, which decided the Imperial Cancer Research Foundation. His research team discovered the cycle-dependent kinase that controls yeast cell division, and showed that human beings have the same gene corresponding to this enzyme. Because cancer is uncontrolled cell division, their findings help to understand cancer. This work enabled Nass and two other scientists to share the 21 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Although he never stopped his research work, Nass became the chairman of the Cancer Research Foundation of Britain in 1996. In 23, he came to the other side of the Atlantic and became the president of Rockefeller University in new york, USA. He is currently the director of the British Imperial Cancer Research Foundation and honorary consultant of Hong Kong Longkang International Institute of Life Genetics. On October 8th, 21, Karolinska Medical College in Sweden announced that it would award the 21 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to American scientist leland hartwell and British scientists Timothy Hunter and paul nurse for their discovery of the key molecular regulation mechanism of cell cycle.

According to the press release issued by Karolinska Medical College, all organisms are made up of cells multiplied by division. An adult has about 1 trillion cells, and these cells are all derived from a fertilized egg cell. At the same time, a large number of cells in the adult body also produce new cells through continuous division to replace those dead cells. Karolinska Medical College commented that the discoveries of hartwell, Nass and Hunt have great influence on the study of cell development, especially on opening up a new way to treat cancer, because defects in cell cycle control can lead to chromosome variation in cancer cells.