Book Talk with your host Lawrence J. King and Professor Eric R. Kandel

It is truely an honor to welcome Mr. Eric R. Kandel to our show. Mr. Kandel is in fact a legend in his own time. Eric R. Kandel, M.D., is University Professor at Columbia, Fred Kavli Professor and Director, Kavli Institute for Brain Science and a Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A graduate of Harvard College and N.Y.U. School of Medicine, Kandel trained in Neurobiology at the NIH and in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He joined the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1974 as the founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior. At Columbia Kandel organized the neuroscience curriculum. He is an editor of Principles of Neural Science, the standard textbook in the field. He recently has written a book on the brain for the general public entitled In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, which won both the L.A. Times and U.S. National Academy of Science Awards for best book in Science and Technology in 2008. A documentary film based on that book also entitled In Search of Memory is now showing in the United States. Eric Kandel’s research has been concerned with the molecular mechanisms of memory storage in Aplysia and mice. More recently, he has studied animal models in mice of memory disorders and mental illness. Kandel has received eighteen honorary degrees, is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as well as the National Science Academies of Austria, Germany and France. He has been recognized with the Albert Lasker Award, the Heineken Award of the Netherlands, the Gairdner Award of Canada, the Harvey Prize and the Wolf Prize of Israel, the National Medal of Science USA and the Nobel Prize for Medicine.