Axel, Richard (1946– )

US neuroscientist. With US neuroscientist Linda Buck he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2004 for his contributions in determining how the olfactory system recognizes and differentiates between different smells.

Axel's and Buck's collaborative research discovered that the sense of smell depends on a large family of around 10,000 genes that produce an equivalent number of odorant receptors in the cells lining the upper part of the nasal epithelium. They discovered that each receptor was triggered by only one specific odorant molecule. They went on to show that the chain reaction that occurred when a receptor was triggered sent signals directly to the higher brain functions that could link a smell to a particular memory or a certain emotion, allowing specific decisions to be made on the basis of smell. Axel and Buck published their fundamental scientific paper of the functioning of the olfactory system in 1991. They subsequently worked separately to expand on their initial work in helping to define the mechanisms involved in olfactory system functions.

Axel was born in New York City. He received his MD from the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland in 1970. He was appointed professor at the department of pathology and biochemistry at Columbia University, New York in 1978. From 1984 he has held the position of investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University, and the position of university professor at the same institution since 1999. Axel was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983. He became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2003.