Hugh de Wardener - the Man and the Scientist.

Hugh de Wardener died on 29th September 2013, ten days before his 98th birthday. He had a diverse upbringing and qualified in Medicine in 1939. He joined the army but was captured in 1942 and imprisoned in Singapore and Thailand until 1945. His clinical care of fellow prisoners was highly regarded. He preserved their clinical records and used them, post-war, to write two Lancet papers. One showed, for the first time, that Wernickes encephalopathy could be caused by severe malnutrition and cured by small doses of vitamin B1. His later academic interests were based on the emphasis he placed on renal physiology. This applied to the topic most associated with his name-Natriuretic Hormone. Whilst de Wardener never isolated this hormone, his early experiments, demonstrating that a third factor other than GFR and aldosterone affected renal sodium transport, were substantiated by others. Hugh had many research interests: pyelonephritis, renal histology, maintenance dialysis and metabolic/renal bone disease. In his later years he researched intensively into the role of sodium and salt in the aetiology of essential hypertension. Hugh was president of the International Society of Nephrology (1969-72) and the UK Renal Association (1975-78). He received many awards and recognitions from across the world, many of them after his (so-called) retirement. Throughout his career he never neglected the care of his patients. As Bob Schrier wrote in his obituary of de Wardener in Kidney International he was a caring physicianwhose dedication to his patients welfare was exemplary.