Richard Axel

Who is this?

Richard Axel (born July 2, 1946) is an American molecular biologist and university professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His work on the olfactory system won him and Linda Buck, a former postdoctoral research scientist in his group, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004. In February 2026, Axel resigned as co-director of Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, calli