David H. Koch Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Investigator,  Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Neurobiologist (Neurology) and Geneticist (Medicine), Massachusetts General Hospital
Member, McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the MIT Center for Cancer Research.
2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1999 Gairdner International Award Winner

Dr. H. Robert Horvitz received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002.  He received S.B. degrees in Mathematics and in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968. He performed his graduate studies at Harvard University in the laboratories of Drs. James Watson and Walter Gilbert and received his Ph.D. in 1974 for his biochemical and genetic analyses of modifications of the E. coli RNA polymerase induced by bacteriophage T4. Dr. Horvitz then joined Dr. Sydney Brenner at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, and there began studies of the development and behavior of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Dr. Horvitz became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978 and became Associate Professor in 1981 and Professor in 1986. He was named Whitehead Professor of Biology in 1999 and David H. Koch Professor of Biology in 2000. Dr. Horvitz has served on many editorial boards, visiting committees and advisory committees, including as a member of the Advisory Council of the National Human Genome Research Institute (N.I.H.) and of the Chair's Advisory Committee of the Joint Steering Committee for Public Policy. He was Co-chair of the Working Group on Preclinical Models for Cancer of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Horvitz was President of the Genetics Society of America in 1995. Dr. Horvitz has received numerous awards for his accomplishments, including the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health (1995); the Ciba-Drew Award for Biomedical Science (1996); the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize (1998); the Gairdner Foundation International Award; the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology (2000); the Genetics Society of America Medal (2001); the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience (2001); the Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences (2002); the Peter Gruber Foundation Foundation Genetics Prize (2002); the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor (2002); the Alfred G. Knudson Award of the National Cancer Institute (2005); and the U.K. Genetics Society Mendel Medal (2007). Dr. Horvitz was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1991, to the U.S. Institute of Medicine in 2003, to the American Philosophical Society in 2004, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 1997. Dr. Horvitz received an Honorary M.D. from the University of Rome (2004) and Honorary D.Sc. degrees from Cambridge University (2004) and Pennsylvania State University (2006).