One of the world’s leading psychiatric researchers is the 1999 winner of the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science: Seymour Kety, M.D., senior psychobiologist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

Kety, who is a professor emeritus of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and a distinguished fellow of APA, was cited for such landmark contributions as the discovery of methods for measuring cerebral blood flow, which led to the development of brain-imaging techniques; his studies of adopted individuals with schizophrenia, which established the critical role of genetics in a disease whose development was routinely blamed on bad parenting; and a lifetime of work in the neurobiology of psychiatric illness and brain disorders.

Nearly 50 years ago Kety became the first scientific director of the National Institute of Mental Health. During his 16-year tenure there he established a program that brought under one umbrella a host of basic research projects concerned with the relationship between brain and behavior.

In 1977 he affiliated with Harvard Medical School and joined McLean’s Mailman Research Center, the first laboratory committed to studying the role of biological factors in mental illness. While there Kety continued his pioneering studies in Denmark of adopted children and schizophrenia.

Kety holds honorary degrees from 10 universities, is founding editor of the Journal of Psychiatric Research, and has won nearly 30 awards including APA’s 1980 Distinguished Service Award.

The Lasker Award committee credited Kety with "shepherding psychiatry into a new scientific era." The Lasker awards, often referred to as "America’s Nobels," have for 54 years recognized scientists who have contributed major advances "in the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and even cure of many of the great crippling and killing diseases of our century." They are named for philanthropists Albert and Mary Woodard Lasker.