Richard Axel

Richard Axel (born July 2, 1946) is an American molecular biologist and neuroscientist renowned for his pioneering discoveries in the mechanisms of olfaction, particularly the identification of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system. He shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Linda B. Buck for these contributions, which revealed how the sense of smell is encoded and processed in the brain. Axel is a University Professor at Columbia University, where he is a professor of pathology and biochemistry. In February 2026, following revelations about his past association with Jeffrey Epstein—which he described as a 'serious error in judgment'—he stepped down as co-director of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University and resigned as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a position he held since 1984.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Polish immigrant parents whose education was interrupted by the Nazi invasion, Axel grew up in New York City and attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He earned an A.B. from Columbia College in 1967 and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1970, graduating early but with a restriction on practicing medicine on live patients due to his research focus. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health under Gary Felsenfeld, Axel joined Columbia University in 1974 as an assistant professor in the Institute of Cancer Research, later becoming a professor of pathology and biochemistry in 1978 and a University Professor in 1999.

Richard Axel was born on July 2, 1946, in New York City, specifically in the Brooklyn borough, as the first child of Polish Jewish immigrant parents whose lives and education were upended by the Nazi invasion of Poland during World War II. His father worked as a tailor, while his mother was described as quick-witted yet not particularly focused on intellectual pursuits; the family home was warm but lacked books, art, or music, reflecting their modest circumstances as refugees. Despite their own limited formal schooling—neither parent had completed high school—they instilled in Axel a profound value for learning, which became a cornerstone of his upbringing in the tight-knit, post-World War II Jewish immigrant community of Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood.

Axel's childhood in Brooklyn was marked by the vibrant street life of the era, where he engaged in games like stickball, baseball with a pink rubber ball and broomstick bat, and basketball, often prioritizing sports over academics initially. To contribute to the family, he began working at a young age: at 11 as a messenger delivering false teeth to dentists, at 12 laying carpets, and at 13 in a deli, experiences that exposed him to diverse influences, including Shakespearean literature introduced by a Russian chef named Vladimir during one of his jobs. This socio-cultural environment of resilient Jewish immigrants, many fleeing persecution, fostered Axel's intellectual curiosity through community emphasis on perseverance and education as paths to opportunity, even amid economic challenges.