His work on the olfactory system won him and Linda Buck, a former postdoctoral research scientist in his group, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004.

[1] He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1963,[2] (along with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Allan Lichtman, Ron Silver, and Alexander Rosenberg), received his B.A.

During the late 1970s, Axel, along with microbiologist Saul J. Silverstein and geneticist Michael H. Wigler, discovered a technique of cotransformation via transfection, a process which allows foreign DNA to be inserted into a host cell to produce certain proteins.

By analyzing rat DNA, they estimated that there were approximately one thousand different genes for olfactory receptors in the mammalian genome.

In addition to contributions to neurobiology, Axel has also made seminal discoveries in immunology, and his lab was one of the first to identify the link between HIV infection and immunoreceptor CD4.

CSHL Double Helix Medal Honoree and was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2014.

He then applied molecular biology to neuroscience revealing over a thousand genes involved in the recognition of odours, a discovery for which he shared the Nobel Prize in 2004.