Presentation of the 1995 A.N. Richards Award to Maurice Burg

Abstract

Maurice Burg was born in 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts, where he lived for the next 26 years. As a young boy he was chubby, quite different from his physique today (Fig. 1). He loved sports, especially baseball, and participated in the Boy Scouts of America, where he rose to the highest rank of an Eagle Scout. His father taught him fly fishing and took him on trips to the Laurentides in Canada. Fly fishing still remains Maurice Burg's ardent passion. Maurice Burg was an excellent student at Newton High School (Table 1) and in 1948 in an international aptitude test received a scholarship with an honorable mention on a national radio broadcast. With this scholarship he entered Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his major in psychology turned his interests to medicine. In 1952 he married Judith Anne Braverman. From 1952 to 1955 he studied medicine at Harvard Medical School. During college and medical school he earned money as a waterfront counselor and instructor of swimming and canoeing at a summer camp for children. His mentor during his residency, who led to his interest in renal physiology, was Maurice Strauss of Boston University Medical School. In 1957 Maurice Burg's scientific career began when he entered the NIH Laboratory of Kidney and Electrolyte Metabolism in Bethesda, Maryland. Here he became Deputy Chief in 1975 and one year later Chief of that institution, a position which he still holds. Himself widowed, he married Ruth Cooper Breslauer in 1967. Both have four children and two grandchildren. All of Maurice Burg's scientific work could be subsumed under the heading of renal transport mechanisms and their regulation (Table 2). His mentor, with whom he published together until 1970, was Jack Orloff. first work was done on kidney slices and separated tubules, where oxygen consumption, transport of sodium, potassium, chloride and para-aminohippurate were studied. big breakthrough came with the technique of isolated perfused tubules, published in 1966 together with Grantham, Abramow, and Orloff. In the following two decades microperfusion studies were performed in cortical collecting ducts, thick ascending limbs, and proximal straight tubules (Table 2). impact of these studies on renal physiology is best summarized by the statement of Mark Knepper, a long time associate of Maurice Burg: The knowledge gained from isolated perfused tubule studies forms the basis for what every medical student is taught today about nephron function. Since the early 1980s, Maurice Burg has turned his interest to