Jeffrey M. Friedman

Jeffrey Friedman, MD, PhD, (born July 20, 1954) is a molecular geneticist at New York City's Rockefeller University. His discovery of the hormone leptin and its role in regulating body weight has had a major role in the area of human obesity.

Biography
Friedman was born in Orlando, Florida in 1954, and grew up in North Woodmere, New York, graduating from Hewlett High School in the Class of 1971. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and, in 1977, received his medical degree from Albany Medical College of Union University in Albany, NY (through a combined six year program). His postgraduate life includes completing two residencies at Albany Medical Center Hospital, a postgraduate fellowship at Rockefeller as well as one at Cornell University Medical College. In 1986, he received a Ph.D. and became an assistant investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

In 2005, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He now has two daughters, Nathalie and Alex.

Awards
His work in the area of obesity led to him receiving two prestigious awards in 2005: the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Passano Foundation Award. His work on leptin garnered him much television time, including an appearance on the PBS show Scientific American Frontiers in a long interview with host Alan Alda. In July 2007 he was awarded the Danone International Prize for Nutrition.

In 2009 Jeffrey M. Friedman was awarded the Shaw Prize and Keio Medical Science Prize, in 2010 the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (both jointly with Douglas L. Coleman) for their work leading to the discovery of leptin, a hormone that regulates food intake and body weight.