Robert S. Langer

Robert Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written nearly 1,500 articles, which have been cited over 310,000 times; his h-index of 276 is the highest of any engineer in history and the 8th highest of any individual in history (behind Sigmund Freud and a few others). He has more than 1,350 issued and pending patents worldwide. His patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies. He served as Chairman of the FDA’s Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (he is one of 4 living individuals to have received both these honors), the Charles Stark Draper Prize (often called the Engineering Nobel Prize), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Albany Medical Center Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Kyoto Prize, Wolf Prize for Chemistry, Millennium Technology Prize, Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), Gairdner Prize, Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, Maurice Marie-Janot Award, and the Lemelson-MIT prize, for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” He holds 34 honorary doctorates and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors.