Lerner grew up on the
South Side of Chicago and excelled at chemistry and
wrestling as a schoolboy. He attended
Hirsch High School. After attending
Northwestern University as an undergraduate, Lerner obtained an
MD from
Stanford Medical School in 1964, then undertook postdoctoral training at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, an early incarnation of the institute he would eventually lead. In the 1970s Lerner carried out research at the
Wistar Institute in Philadelphia then returned to La Jolla to the now renamed Research Institute of Scripps Clinic. In 1982 he was appointed chairman of the Department of
Molecular Biology, then five years later assumed the directorship. In 1991, when the TSRI was established as a
nonprofit entity, Lerner became its first president. Lerner's research into
catalytic antibodies provided a method of catalyzing chemical reactions thought impossible using classical techniques. He was one of the pioneers in developing the field of combinatorial libraries, and in 1992, together with Sydney Brenner, he published a seminal paper launching the field of DNA-encoded libraries. In addition, Lerner has led extensive studies into
protein structure, characterised
cis-9,10-octadecenoamide, a novel
lipid hormone that induces sleep, and provided the first evidence of a role for
ozone in human disease. In 1967 Lerner discovered the role of anti-GBM antibodies in the pathogenesis of Goodpasture's disease. As of 2007, Lerner's
résumé listed 67
patents and 403 published scientific papers. In 2010 he was awarded an
honorary degree from the
University of Warwick to add to those he received from
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2001,
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2003 and
Florida Atlantic University in 2004 and
University of Oxford in 2007. Richard Lerner shared the 2012 Prince of Asturias Award (now called the
Princess of Asturias Award, which is often called the Spanish Nobel Prize, with Sir Gregory Winter for Professor Pieczenik's conception and their development of combinatorial antibody libraries. Under Lerner's leadership, The Scripps Research Institute grew threefold in terms of laboratory space and more than quadrupled its staff levels, making it among the largest nonprofit biomedical research organizations in the world. He also oversaw the establishment of a sister research campus, called Scripps
Florida, in
Palm Beach County. In 2006, Lerner announced that he intended to "return to full-time research in [his] laboratory" in five years. In 2011 it was announced that Lerner's replacement as Scripps President would be
Michael Marletta. Lerner officially stepped down on January 1, 2012, having led the Institute for 25 years. When he was Scripps Research Institute president, in 2005 Lerner's salary was US$1,212,071, placing among the top ten percent of nonprofit executives in the USA. He has three adult children; Danica, Arik and Aaron by a previous marriage to Diana Pickett, a psychotherapist. The Nobel laureate in chemistry
Benjamin List started his career as a protegé of Lerner. Lerner died on December 2, 2021, at the age of 83 in his home in La Jolla. == References ==