Leon Katz (biomedical engineer)

From 1973 to 1988, Katz was Chief, Diagnostic Devices Division, and Evaluation and Standards Division, Bureau of Medical Devices, Health Protection Branch, Health and Welfare Canada. Katz directed a team of researchers and technicians in over 1,700 high-priority concerns and investigations related to medical devices, and participated in drafting and implementing national legislation and corrective regulatory measures to reduce or eliminate device hazards undermining patient health and safety.

From 1965 to 1970, Katz also founded, and was Chief Biomedical Engineer of a commercial medical device manufacturing company - Medco Instruments Inc., later acquired by Air Shields Incorporated. During this period, Katz designed and developed a number of critical-care medical products that were subsequently mass-produced and sold throughout the world, including an infant apnea monitor, the Air Shields Infant Incubator, external cardiac pacemakers, a DC Defibrillator.

From 1960 to 1973, Katz served as Director, Biomedical Engineering, and Chief Perfusionist for Open Heart Surgery, at Hôpital Notre-Dame. Katz worked in cardiac surgery, devising new methods to measure, monitor, and control the oxygen saturation of the hemoglobin, the partial pressure of oxygen dissolved in the plasma, and the pH of the blood during perfusion); he designed cardiac operating rooms and served as Perfusionist in hundreds of open-heart, cardio-pulmonary bypass operations.

From 1955 to 1960, Katz served as Director of the Biomedical Engineering Division, for the Founder of the Institut de Cardiologie de Montréal, Dr. (Senator) Paul David. Katz ultimately conceived, designed, and hand-constructed an original heart-lung bypass machine, with monitoring and control instrumentation.

From 1952 to 1955, Katz served as Director and co-founder of the first Canadian medical Radio-Isotope Laboratory, located at the Jewish General Hospital. Concurrently, Katz conducted pioneering work on cardiac pacing at the Université de Montréal with Dr. Jean-Jacques Lussier, and Dr. Jack Hopps at the National Research Council of Canada.

In 1950, while enrolled in McGill's Graduate School, Physiology Department, Leon Katz was hired by Dr. Herbert Jasper, Chairman of Experimental Neurology at McGill University, to work at the Montreal Neurological Institute where Katz worked closely with Leslie A. Geddes, Head of the Engineering and Technology section. Together, Geddes and Katz conceived and developed medical devices and technologies for Dr. Wilder Penfield, specific to his pioneering brain-mapping surgical needs, and services to treat brain-related diseases.

In 1943, Leon Katz volunteered for active service. As a Canadian soldier stationed in England and fluent in the German language, Katz was seconded to the British Army of the Rhine Control Commission for Germany (CCG). Later stationed in Düsseldorf, a heavily bombed city in the American Zone, Katz served in the CCG's Joint Special Investigations Detachment, enforcing Military Government Laws. In recognition of his military service, Katz was awarded the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal (CVSM), the Clasp to the CVSM, the War Medal 1939-45, and the General Service Badge. He recorded personal testimony about his WWII service for The Memory Project.

Katz graduated Commercial High School in June 1941 with top honours. In 1950 he graduated McGill University with a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical Engineering: Communications) degree that he paired with course work in physics and neurology.

Leon Katz OC OOnt (December 20, 1924 – January 9, 2015) was a Canadian biomedical engineer.

Katz was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Regina (née Fang) and Harry Katz, who had immigrated in the early 1900s from Romania.