o b i tu a r y
http://www.kidney-international.org © 2015 International Society of Nephrology
Gabriel Richet (1916–2014) Kidney International (2015) 87, 3–4. doi:10.1038/ki.2014.357
B Gabriel Richet, 1916–2014
Raymond A. Ardaillou1 and Pierre M. Ronco2,3 for the Tenon community
1National Academy of Medicine,
Paris, France; 2Renal Medicine, University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France and 3Department of Nephrology and Dialysis and INSERM 1155, Tenon Hospital, Paris, France Correspondence: Pierre M. Ronco, University Pierre and Marie Curie, INSERM Unit 702, 4 rue de la Chine, Tenon Hospital, F-75020 Paris, France. E-mail: [email protected] Kidney International (2015) 87
orn in 1916 during the First World War, Gabriel Richet was the fourth of a lineage of famous academic medical doctors, all professors at the Faculté de Médecine in Paris, including his grandfather Charles Richet, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913 for the discovery of anaphylaxis. Gabriel Richet was 23 years old at the outbreak of the Second World War. He had just passed the highly competitive residency examination when he was enlisted in the French army and actively participated in the military campaign. After being a prisoner of war in Germany for a short period, he was released and resumed his activities as a physician in the Paris hospital system. During the German occupation all members of the Richet family were actively engaged in the resistance movement. His father, Charles Richet, was deported by the occupational forces to the concentration camp Dachau, his brother Olivier to Dora, and his cousin Jacqueline Richet-Souchère to Ravensbrück, and his mother, Marthe, was jailed at Fresnes outside of Paris. Soon after the liberation of Paris in 1944, Gabriel Richet enrolled in the army under the high command of General Leclerc, whose army freed Strasbourg in November 1944. In the first months of 1945, fights continued in the area of Colmar in the south of Alsace where Gabriel Richet was active as a doctor of the French commandos. He was injured, received three military citations, and was decorated with the award of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by Général de Gaulle in April 1945. Demobilized from the army, Gabriel Richet joined the department of Louis Pasteur ValléryRadot, where he met Jean Hamburger, whom he followed to Necker Hospital to establish in 1950 the first French department of nephrology. He worked together with Jean Hamburger for 10 years, and both are considered to rank among the postwar rebuilders of French academic medicine. At Necker Hospital, Richet introduced treatment of acute kidney injury with the artificial kidney, which dramatically improved the prognosis of acute kidney failure associated with sepsis and crush syndrome. Together with the other members of the team of Jean Hamburger, Gabriel Richet was a leading investigator
contributing to the worldwide reputation of the Necker nephrology department. He was involved in the first allogenic kidney transplantation from a mother to her son, opening up exciting new therapeutic perspectives in living related transplantation. Introducing the percutaneous kidney biopsy pioneered by Claus Brun, Richet together with Hamburger contributed to the routine histological diagnosis of glomerular diseases, including the first studies by electron microscopy. The Necker team also demonstrated that most patients with advanced renal failure died from serious electrolyte changes rather than from retention of waste products such as urea. This led Richet together with Jean Hamburger and Jean Crosnier to develop the concept of renal intensive care aimed at correcting disorders of the major fluid, electrolyte, acid–base, and other metabolic functions, thereby markedly improving the prognosis of acute renal failure. In 1961, Gabriel Richet was appointed chief of nephrology at Tenon Hospital, at that time an inconspicuous city hospital in the middle of nowhere. He immediately set out to create a clinical and research nephrology center by recruiting a team that initially included Claude Amiel, Raymond Ardaillou, and Liliane Morel-Maroger. This team was then joined by Françoise Mignon, JeanDaniel Sraer, Pierre Verroust, Pierre Ronco, Eric Rondeau, and many others. This nephrology center was made possible by a new hospital wing supported by the French state through the Assistance Publique–Hôpitaux de Paris and by INSERM (the French equivalent of the US National Institutes of Health), the University of Paris, the Association Claude Bernard, and the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), which also supported the research. Thereby Gabriel Richet succeeded in his goal of making the nephrology center at Tenon Hospital a place of national and international excellence for renal diseases as well as an intellectual haven, a foyer intellectuel, as he used to call it. The success could be measured by the large number of fellows and visiting faculty from countries all over the world who trained or did research in this multilingual and multicultural Tenon community, a virtual nephrological tower of Babel. Gabriel Richet provided a unique atmosphere of intellec3
o bi t u ar y
tual curiosity and creativity by providing support and guidance to each member of the team, while at the same time leaving the freedom for all to develop their own projects. Thanks to his generosity and his warm personality, all who worked with him would consider him a father figure, a position that he accepted and filled with a lot of humor and joviality. Thus doctors from around the globe will remember him with warmest personal feelings, and each could contribute an anecdote testifying to his humanity, tolerance, and personal support. He will be fondly remembered by the Tenon community at large. Obviously it would be impossible here to even summarize all the achievements of the Richet school during the 24 years of his leadership at Tenon. Suffice it to say that Gabriel Richet had his own group of research and was proud of the discovery of the dark cells of the collecting duct, now called intercalated cells, which play an important role in acid–base control. Gabriel Richet was one of the early giants of French and international nephrology. He was a founding member of the International Society of Nephrology (ISN). Among his many roles in ISN leadership, he was co-general secretary of the
4
ISN’s first Congress in Geneva and Evian in 1960, and ISN president from 1981 to 1984. He received many awards, including honoris causa degrees; among those awards, the most prestigious probably was the Jean Hamburger Prize of the ISN in 1993. Gabriel Richet was appointed a Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honour by the French state. On his retirement in 1985, Gabriel Richet’s heritage included two renal divisions with quite different medical orientations, a clinical investigation center, and an INSERM research unit, without counting the many nephrology and physiology departments directed by his fellows in France and far beyond. Thanks to Richet’s pioneering impetus, Tenon Hospital has achieved and maintained an outstanding position as a clinical and research center among the international nephrology community. The deeply translational spirit of the medical and scientific actors, the available facilities, and the nephrologists who are working there carry the trademark of this charismatic great Master who has left a profound imprint on nephrology, a medical specialty which he helped establish. DISCLOSURE The authors declared no competing interests.
Kidney International (2015) 87
http://www.kidney-international.org © 2015 International Society of Nephrology
Gabriel Richet (1916–2014) Kidney International (2015) 87, 3–4. doi:10.1038/ki.2014.357
B Gabriel Richet, 1916–2014
Raymond A. Ardaillou1 and Pierre M. Ronco2,3 for the Tenon community
1National Academy of Medicine,
Paris, France; 2Renal Medicine, University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France and 3Department of Nephrology and Dialysis and INSERM 1155, Tenon Hospital, Paris, France Correspondence: Pierre M. Ronco, University Pierre and Marie Curie, INSERM Unit 702, 4 rue de la Chine, Tenon Hospital, F-75020 Paris, France. E-mail: [email protected] Kidney International (2015) 87
orn in 1916 during the First World War, Gabriel Richet was the fourth of a lineage of famous academic medical doctors, all professors at the Faculté de Médecine in Paris, including his grandfather Charles Richet, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913 for the discovery of anaphylaxis. Gabriel Richet was 23 years old at the outbreak of the Second World War. He had just passed the highly competitive residency examination when he was enlisted in the French army and actively participated in the military campaign. After being a prisoner of war in Germany for a short period, he was released and resumed his activities as a physician in the Paris hospital system. During the German occupation all members of the Richet family were actively engaged in the resistance movement. His father, Charles Richet, was deported by the occupational forces to the concentration camp Dachau, his brother Olivier to Dora, and his cousin Jacqueline Richet-Souchère to Ravensbrück, and his mother, Marthe, was jailed at Fresnes outside of Paris. Soon after the liberation of Paris in 1944, Gabriel Richet enrolled in the army under the high command of General Leclerc, whose army freed Strasbourg in November 1944. In the first months of 1945, fights continued in the area of Colmar in the south of Alsace where Gabriel Richet was active as a doctor of the French commandos. He was injured, received three military citations, and was decorated with the award of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by Général de Gaulle in April 1945. Demobilized from the army, Gabriel Richet joined the department of Louis Pasteur ValléryRadot, where he met Jean Hamburger, whom he followed to Necker Hospital to establish in 1950 the first French department of nephrology. He worked together with Jean Hamburger for 10 years, and both are considered to rank among the postwar rebuilders of French academic medicine. At Necker Hospital, Richet introduced treatment of acute kidney injury with the artificial kidney, which dramatically improved the prognosis of acute kidney failure associated with sepsis and crush syndrome. Together with the other members of the team of Jean Hamburger, Gabriel Richet was a leading investigator
contributing to the worldwide reputation of the Necker nephrology department. He was involved in the first allogenic kidney transplantation from a mother to her son, opening up exciting new therapeutic perspectives in living related transplantation. Introducing the percutaneous kidney biopsy pioneered by Claus Brun, Richet together with Hamburger contributed to the routine histological diagnosis of glomerular diseases, including the first studies by electron microscopy. The Necker team also demonstrated that most patients with advanced renal failure died from serious electrolyte changes rather than from retention of waste products such as urea. This led Richet together with Jean Hamburger and Jean Crosnier to develop the concept of renal intensive care aimed at correcting disorders of the major fluid, electrolyte, acid–base, and other metabolic functions, thereby markedly improving the prognosis of acute renal failure. In 1961, Gabriel Richet was appointed chief of nephrology at Tenon Hospital, at that time an inconspicuous city hospital in the middle of nowhere. He immediately set out to create a clinical and research nephrology center by recruiting a team that initially included Claude Amiel, Raymond Ardaillou, and Liliane Morel-Maroger. This team was then joined by Françoise Mignon, JeanDaniel Sraer, Pierre Verroust, Pierre Ronco, Eric Rondeau, and many others. This nephrology center was made possible by a new hospital wing supported by the French state through the Assistance Publique–Hôpitaux de Paris and by INSERM (the French equivalent of the US National Institutes of Health), the University of Paris, the Association Claude Bernard, and the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), which also supported the research. Thereby Gabriel Richet succeeded in his goal of making the nephrology center at Tenon Hospital a place of national and international excellence for renal diseases as well as an intellectual haven, a foyer intellectuel, as he used to call it. The success could be measured by the large number of fellows and visiting faculty from countries all over the world who trained or did research in this multilingual and multicultural Tenon community, a virtual nephrological tower of Babel. Gabriel Richet provided a unique atmosphere of intellec3
o bi t u ar y
tual curiosity and creativity by providing support and guidance to each member of the team, while at the same time leaving the freedom for all to develop their own projects. Thanks to his generosity and his warm personality, all who worked with him would consider him a father figure, a position that he accepted and filled with a lot of humor and joviality. Thus doctors from around the globe will remember him with warmest personal feelings, and each could contribute an anecdote testifying to his humanity, tolerance, and personal support. He will be fondly remembered by the Tenon community at large. Obviously it would be impossible here to even summarize all the achievements of the Richet school during the 24 years of his leadership at Tenon. Suffice it to say that Gabriel Richet had his own group of research and was proud of the discovery of the dark cells of the collecting duct, now called intercalated cells, which play an important role in acid–base control. Gabriel Richet was one of the early giants of French and international nephrology. He was a founding member of the International Society of Nephrology (ISN). Among his many roles in ISN leadership, he was co-general secretary of the
4
ISN’s first Congress in Geneva and Evian in 1960, and ISN president from 1981 to 1984. He received many awards, including honoris causa degrees; among those awards, the most prestigious probably was the Jean Hamburger Prize of the ISN in 1993. Gabriel Richet was appointed a Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honour by the French state. On his retirement in 1985, Gabriel Richet’s heritage included two renal divisions with quite different medical orientations, a clinical investigation center, and an INSERM research unit, without counting the many nephrology and physiology departments directed by his fellows in France and far beyond. Thanks to Richet’s pioneering impetus, Tenon Hospital has achieved and maintained an outstanding position as a clinical and research center among the international nephrology community. The deeply translational spirit of the medical and scientific actors, the available facilities, and the nephrologists who are working there carry the trademark of this charismatic great Master who has left a profound imprint on nephrology, a medical specialty which he helped establish. DISCLOSURE The authors declared no competing interests.
Kidney International (2015) 87
