Marc Kirschner

Marc Kirschner is the John Franklin Enders University Professor of Systems Biology and founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1966 and earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, followed by postdoctoral research at Berkeley and the University of Oxford. Kirschner began his independent career as an Assistant Professor at Princeton University in 1972 and served on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco as a Professor for fifteen years. In 1993, he arrived at Harvard Medical School, where he chaired the Department of Cell Biology before establishing the Department of Systems Biology in 2003. He has held leadership roles including President of the American Society for Cell Biology and service on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health.

A biochemist by training with a strong interest in applying mathematics and physical principles to biology, Kirschner's laboratory investigates biological organization in space and time. His contributions span embryology, cell organization, and cell cycle regulation, including the discovery of the Anaphase Promoting Complex responsible for ubiquitin-mediated degradation of cyclin during mitosis. Current research focuses on cell size control using novel biophysical methods to identify molecular mechanisms; ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, particularly transcription factor turnover and the cell's degradome; and gene expression in early development through comparative transcriptomics in Xenopus, sturgeon, and Saccoglossus, alongside single-cell analysis and post-translational modifications. He co-authored seminal books Cells, Embryos, and Evolution (Blackwell, 1997) and The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma (Yale University Press, 2005) with John Gerhart. Kirschner's honors include election as Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London and Academia Europaea in 1999, the E.B. Wilson Medal—the American Society for Cell Biology’s highest honor—in 2003, and membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His quantitative approaches have shaped systems biology, developmental biology, cell biology, and evolutionary biology.

Professional Email: marc@hms.harvard.edu