Ardem Patapoutian '90

Courtesy of Scripps Research Institute

Ardem Patapoutian '90 has accepted membership in the American Philosophical Society in the Biological Sciences class.

Patapoutian was one of two winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, honored with UC San Francisco professor David Julius for their discoveries of receptors in the body that respond to temperature and touch. Specifically, their research explained how temperature and pressure are converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system.

A biology major as an undergraduate, Patapoutian, who earned his doctorate at Cal Tech, is a professor of neuroscience at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.