Eric Kandel (1929–), Neuroscientist.

© Austrian National Library

Eric Kandel is a neuroscientist and University Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Columbia University. For his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons he was warded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000 (with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard). Kandel was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria in 1929, the family left Austria after the Anschluss in 1938 and Eric Kandell arrived in the United States in 1939 at the age of nine. He graduated from Harvard University and went on to Medical School a New York University in 1952. There, he would eventually form the Division of Neurobiology and Behavior; he has been a member Columbia University's Division of Neurobiology and Behavior since 1974. Initially critical of Austria's dealing with its Jewish diaspora, he is today an Honorary Citizen of the City of Vienna and active in the academic and cultural life of his native city.