Richard Axel - Biography

Biography

Born in New York City, New York, Axel graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1963, received his A.B. in 1967 from Columbia University, and his M.D. in 1971 from Johns Hopkins University. He returned to Columbia later that year and became a full professor in 1978.

Axel is known to be a great aficionado of opera. Axel attended Joan Sutherland's debut performance of La Traviata at the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company in 1964 with his high school friend Jerold Brenowitz, who later became a heart surgeon. Owing to his tall stature, Axel played basketball during high school, when he reportedly allowed the opposing team's center, 'Lew' Alcindor to score 50 points; 'Lew' Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, went on to become the leading scorer in the history of the NBA.

During the late 1970s, Axel, along with microbiologist Saul J. Silverstein, and geneticist Michael H. Wigler, discovered a technique of cotransformation, a process which allows foreign DNA to be inserted into a host cell to produce certain proteins. Patents, now colloquially referred to as the "Axel patents", covering this technique were filed for February 1980 and were issued in August 1983. As a fundamental process in recombinant DNA research as performed at pharmaceutical and biotech companies, this patent proved quite lucrative for Columbia University, earning it almost $100 million a year at one time, and a top spot on the list of top universities by licensing revenue. The Axel patents expired in August 2000. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983.

Axel's primary research interest is on how the brain interprets the sense of smell, specifically mapping the parts of the brain that are sensitive to specific olfactory receptors. He holds the titles of University Professor at Columbia University, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and of Pathology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In addition to contributions to neurobiology, Axel has also made seminal discoveries in immunology, and his lab was one of the first to identify the link between HIV infection and immunoreceptor CD4.

Axel is married to fellow scientist and olfaction pioneer Cornelia "Cori" Bargmann.

Axel is a friend of fellow Columbia neuroscientist, Charles Zuker.

In addition to making contributions as a scientist, Axel has also mentored many leading scientists in the field of neurobiology. Seven of his trainees have become members of the national academy of sciences, and currently six of his trainees are affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's investigator and early scientist award programs. Some notable trainees include Linda B. Buck, David J. Anderson, Catherine Dulac, David Julius, Richard Scheller, Leslie B. Vosshall, Dan Littman, and Michael Wigler.