1. David Jay Julius was born on November 4,1955 and is an American physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate known for his work on molecular mechanisms of pain sensation and heat, including the characterization of the TRPV1 and TRPM8 receptors that detect capsaicin, menthol, and temperature.
David Julius is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
David Julius was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York City, where he attended Abraham Lincoln High School.
David Julius earned his undergraduate degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977.
David Julius attained his doctorate from University of California, Berkeley in 1984, under joint supervision of Jeremy Thorner and Randy Schekman, where he identified Kex2 as the founding member of furin-like proprotein convertases.
David Julius started his career as faculty at the University of California, San Francisco in 1989.
In 1997, David Julius's lab cloned and characterized TRPV1 which is the receptor that detects capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers that makes them "hot".
David Julius's lab has cloned and characterized TRPM8 and TRPA1, both members of the TRP superfamily.
David Julius's lab has made contributions to the study of nociception by discovering toxins that modulate these channels, describing unique adaptations of the channels in diverse species and solving the cryo-EM structures of numerous channels.
David Julius' laboratory made pioneering contributions to the discovery of purinergic receptors, both the P2Y class of G protein-coupled receptors, and the P2X class of ligand-gated ion channels.
In 2000, David Julius was awarded the inaugural Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize for his work on cloning the capsaicin receptor.
In 2007, Julius received the W Alden Spencer Award by the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Department of Neuroscience, and The Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia University, and the Julius Axelrod Prize of the Society for Neuroscience.
David Julius received the Passano Award in the same year.
David Julius has been awarded the 2010 Prince of Asturias Prize for Technical and Scientific Research, the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, and the 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience and the 2020 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.
In 2022, David Julius was awarded the UCSF Medal by the University of California, San Francisco.
In 2025, David Julius was awarded a Honorary Membership in the Society of Toxicology.