Headshot of Eric Kandel.

Eric Kandel

University professor emeritus
Columbia University

Eric R. Kandel is university professor emeritus and professor emeritus of physiology and cellular biophysics, psychiatry, biochemistry, molecular biophysics and neuroscience at Columbia University. He is founding co-director of Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, founding director of Columbia’s Kavli Institute for Brain Science, and Sagol Professor Emeritus of Brain Science at the Zuckerman Institute. He was also a senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1984 to 2022. In 2000, Kandel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies of learning and memory. He has been awarded 24 honorary degrees. Kandel is the author of “In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind” (2006), “The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present” (2012), “Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures” (Columbia, 2016), “The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves” (2018), and “There Is Life After the Nobel Prize” (Columbia, 2022). He is also a co-author of “Principles of Neural Science” (2021), the standard textbook in the field of neuroscience.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

This paper changed my life: Victoria Abraira on a tasty link between circuits and behavior

The findings from Charles Zuker’s lab put the taste system on the map, revealing that some fundamental principles of behavior are hardwired.

By Victoria Abraira
22 July 2025 | 5 min listen
Illustration of an open journal featuring lines of text and small illustrations of eyes and mouths.

Neurophysiologic distinction between autism and schizophrenia; and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 21 July.

By Jill Adams
22 July 2025 | 1 min read
Computer-generated illustration of a brain in a broken jar.

Breaking the jar: Why NeuroAI needs embodiment

Brain function is inexorably shaped by the body. Embracing this fact will benefit computational models of real brain function, as well as the design of artificial neural networks.

By Bing Wen Brunton, John Tuthill
21 July 2025 | 11 min listen