Kandel, Eric Richard (1929– )

Austrian-born US neurobiologist and educator, who with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000 for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system. Kandel discovered the molecular mechanisms involved in learning and the formation of memories.

During the 1970s and 1980s he worked on cellular and molecular mechanisms of three basic forms of learning, habituation, sensitization, and classical conditioning; his findings suggest that learning produces changes in behaviour by modulating the strength of neural connections. He initially studied the sea slug Aplysia but later extended his work to mammals. His discovery has led to a better understanding of medical conditions such as dementia, which affect the memory of the sufferer, and have increased the possibility of the development of drugs to improve memory function is such cases.

Born in Vienna, Austria he emigrated to the USA in 1939. He founded the Centre for Neurobiology and Behaviour at Columbia University, New York in 1974 and became professor of physiology and psychiatry there in 1983. He was appointed senior investigator at Columbia's Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1984.