Interesting Article in Guardian

[AndrewA]

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014 ... thers-name

The Nobel prize-winning geneticist revealed his biggest genetic secret when he took the stage for storytelling group The Moth

I'm a geneticist. I study how chromosomes are inherited in dividing cells. But my story has more to do with my own genetics. I'm English. I was brought up in the 1950s and 1960s in London. My family wasn't very rich. I had two brothers and a sister. My dad was a blue-collar worker. My mum was a cleaner. My siblings all left school at 15. I was different. I passed exams, and I somehow got into university, got a scholarship, and did a PhD.

I wondered, why am I different from the rest of my family? And I didn't have much of an answer. I felt a bit unsettled about that, but I carried on with my life. I got a job in a university. I got married. I had two children, Emily and Sarah. And, you know, just got on with things.

Then my parents retired to the country, and we used to visit them regularly. One day when we were visiting, Sarah, my 11-year-old, had a project at school. And the project was family trees. I said: "Why don't you talk to Grandma about her family tree?" So off Sarah trotted with her grandma. Five minutes later, in came my mum, absolutely white. She said: "Sarah's been asking me about my family tree, and I have to tell you something I've never told you." I was in my 30s by this time. She said: "I never told you… I'm illegitimate." She'd been born in 1910. Her mum wasn't married. She'd been born in the poorhouse. She was brought up by her grandmother, and her mother had married somebody else, who I'd thought was my grandfather, but that wasn't the case. My grandfather was unknown. So I'd lost a grandfather.

Then she said: "And actually it's the same for your father, too." So in two sentences, I'd lost two grandfathers. Well, this was a shock. And then I thought, well, maybe this is where I got some exotic genes, and they sort of recombined, and that's why I'm a bit different. And then I remembered that my middle name was Maxime, and I got it from my dad, who was called Maxime William John. And, you know, he was a farmworker in Norfolk, and this is a French-Russian aristocratic sort of name. So I began to imagine that perhaps I had an exotic grandfather, a French-Russian aristocrat, and that was why I ended up how I was.

And so that seemed OK. That seemed a reasonable explanation, and I got on with my career, and I became an Oxford professor, then a departmental chair. Then they knighted me, and then I got a Nobel prize. So that's all hunky dory. Then in 2003, I decided to go to New York City. Both my parents had died. I went to be president of Rockefeller University. And a couple of years ago, I thought I should try to get a green card. Huge amount of paperwork. You have no idea how complicated it is. Sent the thing off, waited a number of months. Came back. And I was rejected.

I thought, how come? I'm a knight. I've got a Nobel prize, and I'm president of Rockefeller University. I found out they did not like the documentation I'd sent. They particularly didn't like my birth certificate. So I got my birth certificate out, and it was a short birth certificate: who you are, where you were born, the time you were born, your citizenship, and so on. It doesn't name your parents, but it's an official document. I thought, well, I can get the long certificate. I knew the register office would have it. So I phoned up London and said: "Please send that in the post." I told my secretary: "When it arrives, send it off to those silly jerks in Homeland Security."

I went on holiday for a couple of weeks, came back and asked my secretary: "Did you manage to do that?" And she turned to me, and she said: "Well, I didn't do it because the certificate arrived. I looked at it, and I thought, um, maybe you got the name of your mother wrong."

I said: "Of course I didn't get the name of my mother wrong. Don't be ridiculous." So she hands me the certificate, and everybody starts to look at me. So I look at it, and there is the name Nurse, my mother. And I think, well, you know, not a problem. And then I look at it again, and the name is Miriam Nurse.


Culture
The Moth: storytelling special

Series: The Moth: storytelling special
Previous | Next | Index
Sir Paul Nurse: 'I looked at my birth certificate. That was not my mother's name'
The Nobel prize-winning geneticist revealed his biggest genetic secret when he took the stage for storytelling group The Moth

Share 114
1
inShare0
Email

paul nurse
Paul Nurse
The Guardian, Saturday 9 August 2014
Jump to comments (7)

Sir Paul Nurse View larger picture
Paul Nurse: 'She said: "Sarah's been asking me about my family tree, and I have to tell you something I've never told you. I never told you… I'm illegitimate."' Photograph: Mark Chilvers for the Guardian

I'm a geneticist. I study how chromosomes are inherited in dividing cells. But my story has more to do with my own genetics. I'm English. I was brought up in the 1950s and 1960s in London. My family wasn't very rich. I had two brothers and a sister. My dad was a blue-collar worker. My mum was a cleaner. My siblings all left school at 15. I was different. I passed exams, and I somehow got into university, got a scholarship, and did a PhD.

The Moth: This Is a True Story
by Catherine Burns

Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

I wondered, why am I different from the rest of my family? And I didn't have much of an answer. I felt a bit unsettled about that, but I carried on with my life. I got a job in a university. I got married. I had two children, Emily and Sarah. And, you know, just got on with things.

Then my parents retired to the country, and we used to visit them regularly. One day when we were visiting, Sarah, my 11-year-old, had a project at school. And the project was family trees. I said: "Why don't you talk to Grandma about her family tree?" So off Sarah trotted with her grandma. Five minutes later, in came my mum, absolutely white. She said: "Sarah's been asking me about my family tree, and I have to tell you something I've never told you." I was in my 30s by this time. She said: "I never told you… I'm illegitimate." She'd been born in 1910. Her mum wasn't married. She'd been born in the poorhouse. She was brought up by her grandmother, and her mother had married somebody else, who I'd thought was my grandfather, but that wasn't the case. My grandfather was unknown. So I'd lost a grandfather.

Then she said: "And actually it's the same for your father, too." So in two sentences, I'd lost two grandfathers. Well, this was a shock. And then I thought, well, maybe this is where I got some exotic genes, and they sort of recombined, and that's why I'm a bit different. And then I remembered that my middle name was Maxime, and I got it from my dad, who was called Maxime William John. And, you know, he was a farmworker in Norfolk, and this is a French-Russian aristocratic sort of name. So I began to imagine that perhaps I had an exotic grandfather, a French-Russian aristocrat, and that was why I ended up how I was.

And so that seemed OK. That seemed a reasonable explanation, and I got on with my career, and I became an Oxford professor, then a departmental chair. Then they knighted me, and then I got a Nobel prize. So that's all hunky dory. Then in 2003, I decided to go to New York City. Both my parents had died. I went to be president of Rockefeller University. And a couple of years ago, I thought I should try to get a green card. Huge amount of paperwork. You have no idea how complicated it is. Sent the thing off, waited a number of months. Came back. And I was rejected.

I thought, how come? I'm a knight. I've got a Nobel prize, and I'm president of Rockefeller University. I found out they did not like the documentation I'd sent. They particularly didn't like my birth certificate. So I got my birth certificate out, and it was a short birth certificate: who you are, where you were born, the time you were born, your citizenship, and so on. It doesn't name your parents, but it's an official document. I thought, well, I can get the long certificate. I knew the register office would have it. So I phoned up London and said: "Please send that in the post." I told my secretary: "When it arrives, send it off to those silly jerks in Homeland Security."

I went on holiday for a couple of weeks, came back and asked my secretary: "Did you manage to do that?" And she turned to me, and she said: "Well, I didn't do it because the certificate arrived. I looked at it, and I thought, um, maybe you got the name of your mother wrong."

I said: "Of course I didn't get the name of my mother wrong. Don't be ridiculous." So she hands me the certificate, and everybody starts to look at me. So I look at it, and there is the name Nurse, my mother. And I think, well, you know, not a problem. And then I look at it again, and the name is Miriam Nurse.

And that was not the name of my mother. It was the name of my sister. So I'm thinking, oh my God, the people at the register office have cocked up again. And then I look a bit further, and where it says "Father" there's just a line. Just a dash. No father. And then my wife says: "You know what this might mean, Paul?" And I was a bit slow. I didn't quite realise what it might have meant. Then the clouds rolled away. My sister was 18 years and one month older than me. Both my parents, who were now my grandparents, had died, but so had my sister, who was really my mother. She had died early of multiple sclerosis. So I had nobody to confirm if this story was true.

However, on the birth certificate was the place where I was born, and it was my great-aunt's house, in Norwich. And my great-aunt had a daughter who was 11 when I was born. So I phoned her up, and said: "Do you know anything about this?" And she said: "Yes, I do."

She said: "Your sister became pregnant at 17, and she was sent to her aunt's in Norwich." This is like a Dickensian novel, as you can see. "And she gave birth to you. Her mother, your grandmother, pretended the baby was hers. And she sent your real mother back home, and several months later she took you back, pretending that she was your mother."

We all lived together in this two-bedroom apartment for two and a half years, then my real mother got married and left home. There's a photograph of me at this wedding. And my mother, my real mother, is holding the hand of her husband in one hand and my hand in the other. Because, you realise, this was her leaving me with her parents. She never told her husband, so the whole thing was kept secret. Now, at the same wedding, I crawled under the table, a gate-leg table, which had the wedding cake. And I managed to move the leg, and the wedding cake fell off and smashed into pieces. I wonder whether I was revolting at the thought of my mother being taken away.

But I was brought up happily. A little dully, maybe, by my grandparents, but this was only a tragedy for my mother. She had three other children, and she kept four photographs of babies by her bed. I only learned this after her death. Three were her legitimate children, and I was her fourth, illegitimate child.

Well, the final irony here is I'm not a bad geneticist. And yet my rather simple family kept my own genetic secret for over half a century.

[Northern Lass]

That was really interesting reading
thanks for posting

[Rob]

That story has made me sad.

[mallosa]

That story has made me sad.

Ah....group hug.....

[Rob]

That you of all people would mock me for proclaiming my emotions in public !!! A dagger thrust to own heart !! Left I stand and right I yield to the twisting of the blade !!

[peterd]

:shock: That you of all people would mock me for proclaiming my emotions in public !!! A dagger thrust to own heart !! Left I stand and right I yield to the twisting of the blade !!

does it hurt

[Rob]

Yes it does Peter as a matter of fact.

[dudleytaylor]

Sad in a way but his gran was his mother really because she made him the person he was .

[grangers14]

That story has made me sad.

It is sad Rob...
And Im not mocking.
Jo

[AndrewA]

I knew this sort of thing happened, but it made me think to review all my tree to see if there were any age gaps of siblings which could indicate an illigatimate child being adopted by the grandparents.