Elihu Katz

Elihu Katz was born in 1926 in Brooklyn

Elihu Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926, the son of Morris and Rose. He finished Midwood High School in 1944 and then served in the Army for 3 years.

He earned his bachelor's degree in 1948, his master's in 1950 and his doctorate in 1956, all at Columbia University. There he met Ruth Torgovnik, whom he married in 1951. She became a musicologist at the Hebrew University.

Working with Paul Lazarsfeld, he developed the two-step flow model of communication. He also worked on uses and gratifications theory and, with Daniel Dayan, on media events. He taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, and helped found the Hebrew University's Department of Communication and Journalism in the mid-1960s.

In 1967 he led the team that founded Israeli Television at the government's request, and he resigned in March 1969. He was president of the Israeli Sociological Association from 1976 to 1979 and directed the Institute of Applied Social Research from 1987 to 1996.

In 2015 he gave his book collection of over 2,000 volumes to Ben-Gurion University. He died at his home in Jerusalem on 31 December 2021 and was buried at Har Hamenuhot.