About Robert S. Langer
Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng (born August 29, 1948) is an American biotechnologist, businessman, chemical engineer, chemist, and inventor. He is one of the 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was formerly the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and maintains activity in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT. He is also a faculty member of the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Langer has received the worlds 2 highest engineering honors - the Charles Stark Draper Prize and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (each of which has been called the Engineering Nobel Prize). He is the only person to have received both of these awards individually. Langer holds over 1,400 granted or pending patents. He is one of the world's most highly cited researchers and his h-index is now (according to Google Scholar, 2026-5-23) 338 with currently over 481,000 citations. He is a widely recognized and cited researcher in biotechnology, especially in the fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering. He is the most cited engineer in history and one of the 10 most cited individuals in any field, having authored over 1,600 scientific papers. Langer is also a prolific businessman, having been behind the participation in the founding of over 40 biotechnology companies including the well-known American pharmaceutical company, Moderna. Langer's research laboratory at MIT is the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world; maintaining over $10 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers. He has been awarded numerous leading prizes in recognition of his work. He eventually invented polymer systems that would work. At 43 years old, Langer was the youngest person in history to be elected to all three American science academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.