Efraim Racker

Dr. Robert Lefkowitz was born on April 15, 1943, in New York City where he attended school. He was an undergraduate at Columbia College from which he received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1962. He graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1966 with an M.D. Degree. After serving an internship and one year of general medical residency at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he served as a Clinical and Research Associate at the National Institutes of Health from 1968 to 1970. From 1970 to 1973 he was at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, where he completed his medical residency and research and clinical training in cardiovascular disease. During this time, he continued his research and was a teaching fellow at Harvard Medical School. In 1973 he moved to Duke University Medical Center, where he was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Biochemistry. In 1977 he was promoted to Professor of Medicine and in 1982 to James B. Duke Professor of Medicine. He is also Professor of Biochemistry. He has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1976 and was an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association from 1973 to 1976.

Dr. Lefkowitz has been responsible for a number of seminal discoveries in the field of receptor biology, with a particular emphasis on the beta-adrenergic receptor, which regulates a variety of physiological processes including cardiac contraction. He has received numerous awards and honors for his work including the John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Ernst Oppenheimer Memorial Award of the Endocrine Society, the Lita Annenberg Hazen Award for Excellence in Clinical Research, the Award for Outstanding Research of the International Society for Heart Research, the Goodman and Gilman Award of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the American Heart Association Basic Research Prize, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cardiovascular Research, and the Giovanni Lorenzini Prize for Basic Biomedical Research.

Dr. Lefkowitz is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He has served on the editorial boards of a number of leading journals in the fields of biochemistry, pharmacology and clinical investigation and as the president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.