Awards & Winners

Richard Axel

Date of Birth 02-July-1946
Place of Birth Brooklyn
(United States of America, New York City, New York, New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ Metropolitan Division)
Nationality United States of America
Profession Scientist
Richard Axel is a molecular biologist whose work on the olfactory system won him and Linda B. Buck, a former post-doctoral scientist in his research group, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004. In their landmark paper published in 1991, Buck and Axel cloned olfactory receptors, showing that they belong to the family of G protein coupled receptors. By analyzing rat DNA, they estimated that there were approximately one thousand different genes for olfactory receptors in the mammalian genome. This research opened the door to the genetic and molecular analysis of the mechanisms of olfaction. In their later work, Buck and Axel have shown that each olfactory receptor neuron remarkably only expresses one kind of olfactory receptor protein and that the input from all neurons expressing the same receptor is collected by a single dedicated glomerulus of the olfactory bulb.

Awards by Richard Axel

Check all the awards nominated and won by Richard Axel.

2004


Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
(for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system)

2003


Gairdner Foundation International Award
(For their discovery of olfactory receptors and the clarification of how these receptors transfer olfactory signals to the brain.)