Ruth Katz

Ruth Katz was born in 1927 in Duisburg

Ruth Torgownik was born in Duisburg, Germany, in 1927. In 1934, after the Nazis came to power, her family moved to the Land of Israel and settled in Tel Aviv, where her father owned 2 small hotels. Her brother, Efraim Torgovnik, became a political science professor and a deputy mayor of Tel Aviv.

She graduated from the Herzliya Gymnasium and took part in the War of Independence as a member of the Haganah. In 1950 the Jewish Agency sent her to New York to guide a Zionist student movement, and she studied at Columbia University. She married Elihu Katz in 1951, earned a master's degree in 1956 and a doctorate in 1963 on the rise of opera and the Scientific Revolution.

She taught at the Oranim kibbutz seminary from 1956 to 1958. In 1963 she was among the founders of the musicology department at the Hebrew University, where she became a full professor and retired in 1995. With Dalia Cohen she founded the university's ethnomusicology lab, and in 1989 she founded the Amirim honors program.

Her research covers ethnomusicology, the philosophy and aesthetics of music, and music cognition. Her works include the 4-volume anthology Contemplating Music with Carl Dahlhaus and 2 volumes with Ruth HaCohen in 2003. She also served as music editor of the Hebrew Encyclopedia.

In 2012 she received the Israel Prize together with Dalia Cohen. She lived in Jerusalem with Elihu Katz until his death in 2021, and they had 2 sons.