Kandel, Eric R.

Kandel, Eric R., b. Vienna, Nov. 7, 1929, medical scientist, Nobel Prize Laureate for Medicine 2000. Emigrated to the USA in 1939; studied history and literature at Harvard University, Cambridge, then medicine at New York University. 1956-1965 postdoctoral training, clinical residency (the latter at Harvard Medical School); 1965-1974 associate professor at New York University; since 1974 professor in the Department of Physiology and Psychiatry at Columbia University, New York. 1974-1983 Director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior; since 1983 head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; since 1992 professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University. K.´s research has been mainly concerned with the biological basis of memory processes. For his research on how the efficiency of synapses can be modified and which molecular mechanisms take part, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine (shared with A. Carlsson and P. Greengard) in 2000.

Publications: Cellular Basis of Behavior, 1976; Mind and Behavior, 1980; Principles of Neural Science, 1982 (Neurowissenschaften, 1996; ed.).