Lerner was the Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Immunochemistry and Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Chair in Chemistry. He has been the recipient of over 29 honors and prizes. These include the Parke-Davis Award in 1978, the San Marino Prize in 1990, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry for 1994 (with Peter Schultz). He was the Myron L. Bender and Muriel S. Bender Summer Lecturer at Northwestern University in 1994 as well. Richard Lerner was awarded the California Scientist of the Year Award in 1996 and the University of California Presidential Medal in 2002. He has also been elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the United States National Academy of Sciences (1991). In 2010 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Warwick to add to those he received from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2001, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2003 and Florida Atlantic University in 2004 and University of Oxford in 2007.Richard Lerner Receives Honorary Degree from University of Warwick. Etcetera, The Scripps Research Institute, August 2, 2010. Richard Lerner shared the 2012 Prince of Asturis award, that is often called the Spanish Nobel Prize, with Sir Gregory Winter for Professor Pieczenik's conception and their development of combinatorial antibody libraries.
