American endocrinologist (1937–2025)
Joel Francis Habener (June 29, 1937 – December 28, 2025) was an American endocrinologist who was professor of medicine atHarvard Medical School and an associate physician at theMassachusetts General Hospital.[1]
Early life and education
[edit]Habener graduated with a BS degree Cum Laude from the University of Redlands in 1960. He received his MD in 1965 from theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine.[2]
Habener worked withSvetlana Mojsov on elucidating the role ofincretinhormones such asglucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) andglucagon-like peptide-2 (GLP-2).[3]
He was awarded the 2020Warren Alpert Foundation Prize along withDaniel Drucker andJens Juul Holst.[4] He was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences in 2020.[5] In 2021, he was awarded theCanada Gairdner International Award.[6] In 2023, he received theVinFuture Prize.[7] In 2024, he was awarded thePrincess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research,[8] theTang Prize in the category of "Biopharmaceutical Science",[9] theLasker Award for clinical research,[10][11] and theBBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category "Biology and Biomedicine".[12] In 2025 he received theBreakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.[13]
Habener died inNewton, Massachusetts, on December 28, 2025, at the age of 88.[14]
- ^"Joel Habener, M.D. | Mass General Research Institute".Find a Researcher - Massachusetts General Hospital. RetrievedJanuary 9, 2025.
- ^"Joel Habener, MD | Scholars | Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals".www.harringtondiscovery.org. RetrievedJanuary 23, 2025.
- ^Ardehali, Hossein (September 26, 2024)."Joel Habener, Svetlana Mojsov, and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen awarded Lasker prize for pioneering work on GLP-1".The Journal of Clinical Investigation.134 (19).doi:10.1172/JCI186225.ISSN 0021-9738.PMC 11446598.
- ^"Prize Recipients | Warren Alpert Foundation Prize".warrenalpert.org.
- ^"2020 NAS Election".www.nasonline.org.
- ^"Gairdner Awards Laureates".Gairdner Foundation. RetrievedJanuary 10, 2026.
- ^Nhu, Quynh (December 21, 2023)."Battery researchers win $3M Vietnamese awards".VnExpress.
- ^"Five world leaders in the field of Endocrinology, Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research".Fundación Princesa de Asturias. May 6, 2024. RetrievedJanuary 10, 2026.
- ^"Benefiting 1.5 billion Diabetics and Obese Patients Worldwide Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science Honoring Three Scientists".Tang Prize. June 19, 2024. RetrievedJanuary 10, 2026.
- ^"GLP-1-based therapy for obesity: 2024 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award".Lasker Foundation. RetrievedJanuary 10, 2026.
- ^Prashant Nair (September 19, 2024)."QnAs with Svetlana Mojsov, Joel Habener, and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen: Winners of the 2024 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award".Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.121 (39).doi:10.1073/PNAS.2416868121.ISSN 0027-8424.PMID 39297682.Wikidata Q130375905.
- ^"Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine in the seventeenth edition".Frontiers of Knowledge Awards. January 8, 2025. RetrievedJanuary 10, 2026. Habener was honored in the 17th edition of the awards, for the year 2024, although the announcements of winners and the presentation ceremonies took place in 2025.
- ^"Joel Habener".Breakthrough Prize. RetrievedJanuary 10, 2026.
- ^"Joel Habener, Whose Research Helped Develop Weight-Loss Drugs, Dies at 88". The Wall Street Journal. December 29, 2025. RetrievedDecember 29, 2025.
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Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research |
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- 1981: Alberto Sols
- 1982: Manuel Ballester
- 1983: Luis Antonio Santaló Sors
- 1984: Antonio García-Bellido
- 1985: David Vázquez Martínez andEmilio Rosenblueth
- 1986: Antonio González González
- 1987: Jacinto Convit andPablo Rudomín
- 1988: Manuel Cardona andMarcos Moshinsky
- 1989: Guido Münch
- 1990: Santiago Grisolía andSalvador Moncada
- 1991: Francisco Bolívar Zapata
- 1992: Federico García Moliner
- 1993: Amable Liñán
- 1994: Manuel Patarroyo
- 1995: Manuel Losada Villasante andInstituto Nacional de Biodiversidad of Costa Rica
- 1996: Valentín Fuster
- 1997: Atapuerca research team
- 1998: Emilio Méndez Pérez andPedro Miguel Echenique Landiríbar
- 1999: Ricardo Miledi andEnrique Moreno González
- 2000: Robert Gallo andLuc Montagnier
- 2001: Craig Venter,John Sulston,Francis Collins,Hamilton Smith, andJean Weissenbach
- 2002: Lawrence Roberts,Robert E. Kahn,Vinton Cerf, andTim Berners-Lee
- 2003: Jane Goodall
- 2004: Judah Folkman,Tony Hunter,Joan Massagué,Bert Vogelstein, andRobert Weinberg
- 2005: Antonio Damasio
- 2006: Juan Ignacio Cirac
- 2007: Peter Lawrence andGinés Morata
- 2008: Sumio Iijima,Shuji Nakamura,Robert Langer,George M. Whitesides, andTobin Marks
- 2009: Martin Cooper andRaymond Tomlinson
- 2010: David Julius,Baruch Minke, andLinda Watkins
- 2011: Joseph Altman,Arturo Álvarez-Buylla, andGiacomo Rizzolatti
- 2012: Gregory Winter andRichard A. Lerner
- 2013: Peter Higgs,François Englert, andEuropean Organization for Nuclear Research CERN
- 2014: Avelino Corma Canós,Mark E. Davis, andGalen D. Stucky
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Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research |
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- 2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier andJennifer Doudna
- 2016: Hugh Herr
- 2017: Rainer Weiss,Kip S. Thorne,Barry C. Barish, and theLIGO Scientific Collaboration
- 2018: Svante Pääbo
- 2019: Joanne Chory andSandra Myrna Díaz
- 2020: Yves Meyer,Ingrid Daubechies,Terence Tao, andEmmanuel Candès
- 2021: Katalin Karikó,Drew Weissman,Philip Felgner,Uğur Şahin,Özlem Türeci,Derrick Rossi, andSarah Gilbert
- 2022: Geoffrey Hinton,Yann LeCun,Yoshua Bengio, andDemis Hassabis
- 2023: Jeffrey I. Gordon,Everett Peter Greenberg, andBonnie Bassler
- 2024: Daniel J. Drucker,Jeffrey M. Friedman,Joel F. Habener,Jens Juul Holst, andSvetlana Mojsov
- 2025: Mary-Claire King
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