Richard Axel

See also Wikipedia's article about "Richard Axel".

Richard Axel, CC '67, is a University Professor officially affiliated with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He discovered a technique of cotransformation, a process which allows foreign DNA to be inserted into a host cell to produce certain proteins. Patents were filed. These are are known as the "Axel patents". They are used by many pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and have made a pile of money for Columbia. At one point, the university made around $100m per year from the patents. The patents finally expired in August 2000. Boo.

Axel won a John Jay Award in 1992, an Alexander Hamilton Medal, and the much less prestigious Nobel Prize in 2004. He will be one of the heads of the Jerome L. Greene Science Center.

External links

Richard Axel: One of the Nobility in Science, P&S Winter 2005