Milestones in Nephrology

Being the last survivor a of the original triumvirate that launched the hairpin countercurrent theory of urine concentration, I thought it might be seemly for me to reminisce about how it came about 50 years ago. In 1946, I graduated in chemistry at the University in Budapest (Hungary) and became the lucky recipient of a fellowship offered by the University of Basel (Switzerland). A few months after my arrival to Switzerland, the Iron Curtain closed and I decided not to return to Hungary. On arriving in Basel, I contacted Professor Werner Kuhn, an outstanding physical chemist, and asked him to accept me as his graduate student to work on a thesis. Kuhn’s name remains forever linked to various fields of physical chemistry (to name some: the absolute configuration of d and l amino acids, the random walk theory of rubber elasticity of polymers, isotope separation by centrifuges and distillation, etc.). He was a brilliant theoretical physical chemist of the old mold. He refused to use virgin paper for his calculations and he literally did all of his groundbreaking work on the back of used envelopes. While I was in his institute, he did essentially no experimental work himself, relying on his students whom he guided constantly with wonderful advice. The main exchange of ideas took place in a coffeehouse, where we had a reserved table for one afternoon a week. The number of graduate students around the table varied between 4 and 10, and the table in front of us was always covered with scrap paper on which real science was scribbled. Kuhn was a quiet man and never showed impatience with collaborators who may not have had anything to report for many weeks. One could not help but learn a lot in this coffeehouse, because many different problems were discussed on every occasion (statistics of polymer configurations, dichroism produced by irradiation of dyes immobiwith comments by BART HARGITAY AND S. RANDALL THOMAS MILESTONES IN NEPHROLOGY J Am Soc Nephrol 12: 1566–1586, 2001