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Richard Axel mapped how the nose turns roughly a thousand different genes into a system that can recognize and remember an almost unlimited range of smells — work that reshaped neuroscience's understanding of how the brain builds perception from raw sensory data. He shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with his former postdoctoral researcher Linda Buck for identifying the odorant receptor gene family and how it encodes olfactory identity. In February 2026 he resigned his posts at Columbia and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute over a past association with Jeffrey Epstein, calling it a serious error in judgment.