Jeffrey M Friedman

Jeffrey Friedman (born July 20, 1954) is a molecular geneticist at New York City's Rockefeller University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His discovery of the hormone leptin and its role in regulating body weight has had a major role in the area of human obesity. Friedman is a physician scientist studying the genetic mechanisms that regulate body weight. His research on various aspects of obesity received national attention in late 1994, when it was announced that he and his colleagues had isolated the mouse ob gene and its human homologue. They subsequently found that injections of the encoded protein, leptin, decreases body weight of mice by reducing food intake and increasing energy expenditure. Current research is aimed at understanding the genetic basis of obesity in human and the mechanisms by which leptin transmits its weight-reducing signal.

Awards:

• 1994 and 1996 Time Magazines's Best of Science section
• 1995 Popular Science's Best of Science Award
• 1996 Heinrich Wieland Prize
• 1997 Jacobaeus Prize
• 1999 Steven C. Beering Award
• 2000 Endocrinology Transatlantic Medal
• 2000 Rolf Luft Award, Karolinska Hospital
• 2001 Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
• 2001 Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Metabolic Research
• 2005 Passano Award
• 2005 Elected to The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member
• 2005 Gairdner International Award
• 2006 Kovalenko Medal
• 2007 Danone International Prize
• 2009 Keio Medical Science Prize
• 2009 Shaw Prize for Life Sciences and Medicine
• 2009 Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence
• 2010 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate
• 2010 Robert J. and Claire Passano Foundation Award
• 2010 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award
• 2012 The Foundation IPSEN 11th Endocrine Regulation Prize
• 2012 UCL Prize Lecture in Clinical Science
• 2012 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine (co-winner with Douglas Coleman)
• 2013 King Faisal International Prize in Medicine
• 2013 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2019 Wolf Prize in Medicine