PhD, UCSD. Postdoctoral work, Salk Institute, San Diego. Then worked at the Basel Institute for Immunology, Basel, Switzerland; performed landmark immunology experiments. Using advanced techniques of gene manipulation, is now unravelling the molecular, cellular and neural circuit mechanisms that underlie learning and memory. Studies have broad implications for psychiatric and neurologic diseases. Currently, Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Director: RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics, MIT; RIKEN Brain Science Institute. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (1987) for discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity. Has since continued to make important contributions but in an entirely different field: neuroscience.