In Memoriam
Bill was born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and he received his undergraduate education at Harvard College. He went on to obtain a Bachelor of Medical Sciences from Dartmouth Medical School in 1963 and a Doctor of Medicine (cum laude) from Harvard Medical School in 1965.
Following this, he underwent two years of residency training at the University of California, San Francisco, the third year of his residency training on the Harvard Medical Service at Boston City Hospital, and his training in nephrology first at the Boston City Hospital and then at the University of Chicago. He was a Captain in the Medical Corps of the United States Army from 1965 through 1967 and served the nation in Vietnam.
His first faculty appointment was at the University of Chicago but within two years, he moved back to Boston University School of Medicine where he stayed from 1973 through 1982. He was recruited to the University of Washington as the second head of the division of nephrology in 1982 after Belding Scribner, a position that he served in through 2002. He was the first Belding Scribner Endowed Professor of Medicine at UW starting in 1995.
Bill was one of the first investigators worldwide to focus on the pathogenesis of glomerular diseases. While he had an interest in glomerular diseases broadly, he was particularly interested in the pathogenesis of membranous nephropathy, the role of complement in immune-mediated glomerular diseases, and membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis. He, along with Philip Hoedemaker, was the first to show that immune complexes could form in situ in the glomerulus – an essential advance in our current understanding of membranous nephropathy. He demonstrated that activation of the full classical complement pathway through C5b-9 was the critical effector of injury in many types of immune-mediated GN, forming the basis for the current translational explosion of new therapeutic agents directed against components of complement pathway to treat glomerular diseases.
Over the course of three decades, Bill co-authored over 150 original research publications and over 100 invited book chapters, editorials, and reviews. Much of his work was published in leading biomedical journals such as Lancet, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Kidney International, and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The UW division of nephrology secured its first-ever T32 training grant under his leadership in 1985 and then in the 1990s secured a second T32 training grant for clinical research, becoming the only division of nephrology nationwide to be awarded two simultaneous training grants from the NIH. He oversaw the training of 30 research fellows and visiting scholars, ten from the United States and 20 from overseas, and 80% of them went on to have successful long-term academic careers – ten became division heads of nephrology in the United States and four overseas; three became Deans of medical schools; four became Presidents of national nephrology societies; and one became the President of the International Society of Nephrology (Masaomi Nangaku). He also successfully obtained funding for a George O’Brien Kidney Research Center at the University of Washington for 10 years (1990-1999).
Under his leadership, the UW division of nephrology became known worldwide for research and training in glomerular diseases. He recruited 13 new faculty, eight from other institutions, many of them physician-scientists. The fellowship programs received its first accreditation from ACGME in 1983 and it started a transplant fellowship in 1989. He expanded the clinical work in nephrology to also include transplant nephrology.
In addition to his work at UW, Bill made many contributions locally, nationally, and internationally. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Northwest Kidney Centers from 1995 through 2002. He served as the President of the American Society of Nephrology from 1995 through 1996, he was the inaugural President of the Council of American Kidney Societies from 1996 through 1997, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology from 2001 through 2006, and the President of the International Society of Nephrology from 2005 through 2007. In 2018, the American Society of Nephrology recognized his many contributions with John P. Peters award, a life-time achievement award that recognizes individuals who have made substantial contributions to the discipline of nephrology and have sustained achievements in one or more domains of academic medicine including clinical care, education, and leadership.
Bill is survived by his wife, Adrienne, and two sons.
