Eric Richard Kandel

Kandel, Eric Richard, 1929-, American neurobiologist, b., Vienna, Austria, M.D. New York Univ. 1956. Kandel was at the Harvard Medical School (1960-65) and New York Univ. (1965-74) before joining the faculty at Columbia in 1974. Kandel received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Greengard and Arvid Carlsson for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system. Using the sea slug as a model system for learning, Kandel uncovered the molecular mechanisms underlying short- and long-term memory. His finding that memories are formed at the synapse, the junction across which nerve impulses are passed, provided an important step toward better understanding of complex memory functions in humans.