Dr. Lodish received his A.B. degree Summa Cum Laude in Chemistry and Mathematics from Kenyon College in 1962 and his Ph.D. degree in genetics from the Rockefeller University in 1966. Following two years of postdoctoral research at the M.R.C. Laboratory of Molecular Biology with Drs. Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick, he joined the faculty of the MIT Department of Biology. He was promoted to Professor in 1976, and in 1983 was appointed Founding Member of the new Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. In 1999 he also became Professor of Biological Engineering in the new MIT Department of Biological Engineering.

He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1986, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Boston Children's Hospital, where he chairs the Board Research Committee. He is also the lead author of the textbook Molecular Cell Biology; the seventh edition was published in April 2012. During the 2004 calendar year he served as President of the American Society for Cell Biology. Dr. Lodish was a founder and scientific advisory board member of several biotech companies including Genzyme, Inc. and Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Since 2007 he has been the Founding Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the group charged with oversight of the state's 10- year $1 billion investment in the life sciences.