Katz, Lawrence, 1956-

Lawrence C. Katz (December 23, 1956 – November 26, 2005) was an American neurobiologist. He was an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His lab was located in Duke University Medical Center, where he was the James B. Duke Professor of Neurobiology. Katz received his B.S. from the University of Chicago (1981) and his Ph.D. in neurobiology from the California Institute of Technology (1984), where he worked with Masakazu Konishi. He performed his postdoctoral work with Torsten Wiesel at the Rockefeller University and continued as an assistant professor at Rockefeller before moving to Duke. His research focused on the development and function of the mammalian cortex, especially neurotrophins and neurogenesis. He pioneered the application of optical imaging of neurons (using fluorescent calcium or voltage indicators) and photostimulation (using caged glutamate) to probe circuit development. His research centered on the key senses of hearing and language (birdsong), sight and, most recently, smell, where he did groundbreaking research on the functional analysis of the olfactory system. Katz and his colleagues combined biochemistry and physiology to discover a mouse social pheromone—purifying a single, very rare molecule (methylthio)methanethiol (MeSCH2SH; MTMT) from mouse urine based on its ability to stimulate olfactory neurons. Katz was not directly related to Nobel laureate and fellow neurobiologist Bernard Katz. Larry Katz died of melanoma at the age of 48. There are two awards named after him. The Larry Katz Prize for Innovative Research in Neuroscience is given by Duke University to a neuroscientist whose work reflects Larry's openness to new ideas, creativity, and enthusiasm for technical and conceptual innovation. The Larry Katz Memorial Lecture Award is given in the biennial Cold Spring Harbor Meeting on "Neuronal Circuits: From Structure to Function" to a graduate student who has done the most original and significant work in the past two years on neuronal circuits.