Nine years after winning the Nobel Prize, neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who turned 80 on Nov. 7, is as inspired by science as he was at the start of his career. “Exciting things keep on popping out,” he says.

Kandel was one of the first scientists to study the brain at a cellular level in the 1960s, helping to meld the fields of psychiatry and molecular biology. His pioneering work led to the discovery that short-term and long-term memories are located at the synapse, or the point of communication among nerve cells.