Eric Steven Lander

Eric Steven Lander (born February 3, 1957), a mathematician and geneticist, is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, former member of the Whitehead Institute, and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He was co-chair of U.S. President Barack Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He is a 1987 MacArthur Fellow.

Early life and education

Lander was raised in a Jewish family, the son of Harold and Rhoda Lander who were both lawyers. He was captain of the math team at Stuyvesant High School and an International Mathematical Olympiad Silver Medalist for the United States, graduating from high school in 1974. He attended and later taught at the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program. At the age of seventeen, he wrote a paper on quasiperfect numbers for which he won the Westinghouse Science Talent Search.

Lander attended Princeton University, where he graduated in 1978 as valedictorian. He did his bachelor thesis under supervision of John Coleman Moore with the title "On the structure of projective modules". He then attended the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and he wrote his Doctor of Philosophy thesis on algebraic coding theory and symmetric block designs, under the supervision of Peter Cameron.

Recognition and service

• 1999, Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
• 2008, co-chaired of the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in the Obama administration.
• 2012, Dan David Prize.
• 2012, Member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board.
• 2013, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
• 2017, Honoris causa doctorate from the Université catholique de Louvain.
• 2017, William Allan Award from the American Society of Human Genetics.