Dr. Eric Kandel

Eric R. Kandel, M.D., is University Professor and Fred Kavli Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University; and Senior Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is Director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and Co-Director of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.

A graduate of Harvard College and N.Y.U. School of Medicine, Dr. Kandel trained in Neurobiology at the NIH and in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He joined the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1974 as the founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, and organized Columbia’s neuroscience curriculum.

Dr. Kandel has explored the molecular mechanisms of memory storage in both the sea slug Aplysia and mice. He has expanded his research to animal models of memory disorders, mental illness, and drug abuse. He has received over 20 honorary degrees and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as well as the National Science Academies of Austria, France, Germany, and Greece. He has been recognized with the Albert Lasker Award, the Heineken Award of the Netherlands, the Gairdner Award of Canada, the Harvey Prize and the Wolf Prize of Israel, the National Medal of Science USA, and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2000.

Dr. Kandel is an editor of Principles of Neural Science, the standard textbook in the field. He reached a broad general audience with his 2006 book In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, and most recently through the Charlie Rose Brain Series on PBS. He has published two books on the intersection of art and science: The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present, and his latest, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures.