Eric Kandel, Nobel Prize Winner and University Professor, to Retire

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

I write to share the news that Eric Kandel, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and beloved University citizen, will be retiring on August 31, 2022. Eric is a University Professor, Sagol Professor of Brain Science, Codirector of Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, Founding Director of Columbia’s Kavli Institute for Brain Science, and Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

To celebrate Eric is to marvel at the scope and scale of his contributions to the study of the mind. He has investigated how synapses in the brain can be modified by learning, and how molecules and genes help to turn short-term memories into long-term ones and suppress others entirely. In 2000, Eric shared the Nobel Prize for groundbreaking work into the changes that brain cells undergo when memories are made. His research has helped make significant advancements in the study of diseases like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia.

When plans were being made for Columbia’s expansion into Manhattanville, I believed that one of the cornerstone initiatives had to be devoted to brain science and its connections to the study of mind in every discipline and field of inquiry all across the University. From the start, Eric was centrally involved in the creation of what is now called the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Two decades later, more than 850 researchers across 19 academic departments call the Jerome L. Greene Science Center in Manhattanville home. Every branch of the scholarly community has been touched.