Lawrence Kolb

Biography

He was born in on June 16, 1911, in Baltimore, Maryland. His family moved to Ireland from 1928 to 1931, and he attended Trinity College in Dublin. He returned to the United States to attend medical school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Following graduation, he did residency training in psychiatry and neurology, then considered one specialty, at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York. During World War II, he went into the Navy and was stationed aboard hospital ships and then put in charge of a clinic for "battle fatigue" in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. After the Navy, Kolb worked at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland (where a collection of his papers are held) and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

In 1954 Kolb was appointed chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Kolb oversaw numerous clinical and research advances during his 21-year tenure, the longest of any director. In 1975 Kolb left his posts at Columbia to become the New York State Commissioner of Mental Hygiene and correct abuses in the state system of mental health.

He died on October 20, 2006, in Orlando, Florida.