Linda B. Buck biography

Profile

Linda B. Buck, along with collaborator Richard Axel, determined that most of the details they uncovered about the sense of smell are virtually identical in rats, humans and other animals, although humans have only about one-third the number in rats. The work helped boost scientific interest in the possible existence of human pheromones, odorant molecules known to trigger sexual activity and certain other behavior in many animals, and won Buck and Axel the Nobel Prize in 2004.