Philip Leder is an American geneticist. Philip Leder was born in 1934 in Washington D.C. He received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1956 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1960. He holds honorary doctorates from Yale University, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York and the University of Guelph, Ontario. From 1968 to 1973 he headed the Biochemistry Department of the Graduate Program of the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1972 Professor Leder was appointed director of the Laboratory for Molecular Genetics at the same institution and remained in that post until 1980. In 1980 he returned to Harvard Medical School as Professor of Genetics, occupying the John Emory Andrus Chair. In 1986 Professor Leder became a senior researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

He has been awarded various honours and prizes for his scientific work. Professor Leder is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He is a member of the board of a large number of scientific institutions in the United States.