Jeffrey C Hall was born in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York, USA and is Professor Emeritus of Biology at Brandeis University, Waltham, USA. He obtained his PhD in Genetics in 1971 from the University of Washington, Seattle, did postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology and joined the faculty at Brandeis University in 1974 where he rose to the rank of Professor in 1986. After retiring from Brandeis, he joined the faculty of the University of Maine in Orono from which he retired some years ago. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine 2013 is awarded in equal shares to Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young for their discovery of molecular mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms.