Eric Richard Kandel is an American neuropsychiatrist. Kandel was born in 1929 in Vienna, Austria, in a middle-class Jewish family. Kandel earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and then a medical degree from New York University School of Medicine. He held faculty position at Harvard Medical School and the New York University School of Medicine from 1962 to 1974 and then moved to Columbia University as founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior. He is Kavli Professor, a senior investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a Co-Director of Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia University. His research not only enriched scientific understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms; he has given hope for more refined and effective treatment of learning disorders, memory impairment, and many psychiatric illnesses. Kandel is a recipient of many honors including the Lasker Award (1983), National Medal of Science (1988), and Wolf Prize (1999). Along with publishing many neuroscience textbooks, his memoir, In Search of Memory, received the National Academy of Sciences Communication Award for Science Book of the Year in 2007.