Stephen Katz, who has led the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases since 1995, died unexpectedly last week (December 20) after suffering a severe stroke, the National Institutes of Health announced. The dermatology researcher previously served as a senior investigator in the Dermatology Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he was still an adjunct investigator at the time of his death. He was 77.
“Just yesterday he was working on a presentation for this morning’s Steering Committee, and now he is gone,” National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins wrote in a statement last week. “I am still reeling from this sudden, tragic turn of events.”
Katz earned his medical degree from Tulane University Medical School in 1966. Eight years later, he finished his PhD in immunology at the University of London before joining the NCI, where he worked for the next four decades, ...
