Seymour S. Kety (August 25, 1915 – May 25, 2000) was an American neuroscientist who was credited with making modern psychiatry a rigorous and heuristic branch of medicine by applying basic science to the study of human behavior in health and disease.
[1] After Kety died, his colleague Louis Sokoloff noted that: "He discovered a method for measuring blood flow in the brain, was the first scientific director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and produced the most-definitive evidence for the essential involvement of genetic factors in schizophrenia."
Kety attended Central High School in Philadelphia and found himself excelling greatly in chemistry.
Throughout high school, he pursued his interest in the physical sciences and also gained knowledge of both Greek and Latin.
Only after Seymour arrived prepared to start his fellowship did he learn that Aub changed his area of study — he was now working with traumatic and hemorrhagic shock.
Joseph Aub changed his work to study the shock because it was a time of war, and the research was pressing.
While back in Pennsylvania, Seymour worked with Carl Schmidt, an expert in cerebral circulation.
Eventually, Kety and Schmidt worked together to form experiments about the cerebral circulation in a human.
[1][2] After collaborating with many doctors on various projects, Seymour S. Kety became the chairman of the department of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University in 1961.
He said that genetic influences may be largely responsible for psychosis, comparing it to phenylketonuria or Huntington's disease.
In psychiatry, Kety discovered the strong link between genetics and the staggering disease of schizophrenia.