Kety Awarded Prize For Medical Research

Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience Seymour S. Kety will receive one of the nation's most prestigious awards for medical research, the Lasker Foundation announced Sunday.

A psychobiologist at Belmont's McLean Hospital, Kety will receive the Lasker Award, known as the "American Nobel," on Oct. 1. According to the foundation, roughly one-fourth of winners have gone on to receive Nobel Prizes.

"Seymour Kety, more than any single person, brought important scientific perspective to the [origins] of schizophrenia," the award citation reads.

Kety's research shifted the burden of psychiatric treatment from patients' behaviors to the biological basis for the disease, the award reads.

Kety's work in this and other areas have "shepherd[ed] psychiatry into a new scientific era," it continues.

Kety, who was not available for comment last night, has stressed in previous interviews that while his research shows that schizophrenia is genetically based, it is not proven that that genes are the only cause of the disease.

But Kety's work isn't finished yet.

"Kety's studies of the genetics of mental illness...constitute a major contribution for any scientist. In fact, this merely represents what might be called the middle phase of Kety's professional life," the citation says.

His interest in academics came at an early age. At the age of 10, Kety was bedridden after a car accident. His parents gave him the 12-volume Book of Knowledge to read; Kety read it cover-to-cover.

While his best-known work has been in medical research, Kety has also spent many years as a teacher and a medical administrator.

Kety was the first scientific director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, where he worked for 16 years prior to arriving at Harvard Medical School. He also served as the Director of the Psychiatric Research Laboratories at Massachusetts General Hospital.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and has taught medicine at several colleges in the U.S. and France.

He holds honorary degrees from 10 universities.

Kety and his wife Josephine will celebrate their 60th anniversary next year.