UCI to Be Host to British Winner of Nobel Prize

Sir Bernard Katz, a Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist from England, arrived for a visit at UC Irvine Thursday to find he had won another prize, of a sort.

Katz, who is professor emeritus at University College in London, was the guest of honor at a UCI luncheon, where his UCI faculty friend and former London colleague, Ricardo Miledi, announced: “I thought Sir Bernard should be introduced to our California life, so I bought him a California lottery ticket. And he was a winner. He won the amazing amount of $4.”

The audience, consisting of high-ranking UCI officials and academic-award-winning faculty, broke into laughter.

Katz was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine in 1970 for his discovery of the process that occurs when nerves trigger muscular reaction.

A native of Leipzig, Germany, Katz said he looks forward to working again with Miledi during his two-week visit at the Irvine campus. He and Miledi had worked together for 25 years in London before UC Irvine wooed Miledi here. Katz said he was happy for his colleague but that Miledi’s leaving was “a great loss . . . to British science.” Miledi, who is now UCI’s distinguished professor of psychobiology, was chair of the department of biophysics at University College in London before coming to Irvine in 1984.

Katz was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1969 for his scientific discoveries. He will give a lecture at UCI at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Science Lecture Hall. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled “Looking Back at the Neuromuscular Junction.”