The world of nephrology is mourning after the loss of one of its towering figures, Renee Habib. She was born in 1924 in Casablanca in a French Sephardic family. After a bright education in the Lycee Francais her parents were not enthusiastic about her wish to become a doctor. At that time such ambitions were not always considered appropriate for a woman and she initially studied English with the intention of becoming a teacher. At the end of the Second World War, she moved from Morocco to Algiers and thence to Paris to fulfill her ambition of entering medical school. After a distinguished undergraduate career, she graduated with an MD in 1953. Paediatric training was undertaken under the direction of Professor Robert Debre, one of the founding father's of modern paediatrics. She decided to specialize in pathology and trained in London with Professor Martin Bodian at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. She met her eventual husband, Elio, whilst they were medical students. Renee knows, as do all their friends in paediatrics throughout the world, the important role that Elio has played in helping and supporting her throughout her career, while he became himself a distinguished paediatrician. Medical research in France in the 1950s was both poorly developed and supported, with little administrative structure and almost no laboratory facilities or funding. Few people elected to undertake research as a career. In 1953, Professor Dubre suggested that she should become a fulltime investigator in INSERM, then in its infancy, but now, 50 years later, a strong institution with 390 research units and nearly 5000 people engaged in biomedical research. Her career within INSERM progressed successfully and she was promoted to Director of Research (corresponding to a university chair) in 1967. In 1979 she was nominated as Director of the INSERM unit 192 entitled “Unite de Recherche sur les Maladies Renales de l'Enfant”, a laboratory created for her. Initially, along with Professor Dubre, she worked in a very small room in the basement of a prefabricated building at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital. In 1972, her unit was transferred into new laboratories, built by INSERM, although this facility was perhaps not large enough for all the activities that would be undertaken there. In this laboratory, she gathered around her a small team of people devoted to full-time research, all of whom are renowned in the world of paediatric nephrology: MarieClaire Gubler, Claire Kleinknecht, Micheline Levy and Corinne Antignac. She worked in this laboratory with a team of highly efficient technicians: Mireille Lacoste, Agnes Beziau, Mireille Sich, and Colette Naizot, particularly dedicated to her research. Several clinicians, Michel Broyer, Patrick Niaudet and Marie-France Gagnadoux, also had the privilege to work with her during their entire careers, and it has always been a close and fruitful collaboration. Together they formed a kind of family, with her as the senior member, directing the studies and administering with warm friendship, colourful outspokenness and with firmness. Her primary interest in paediatric nephrology developed in collaboration with Professor Pierre Royer, a great scientific and medical personality, who created the first school of paediatric nephrology, where French and other European paediatricians would be trained and eventually go on to develop their own groups. With him, she began to study renal biopsy material from sick children. She also worked with Professor Jean Hamburger, participating in the creation of a renal pathology laboratory in the adult clinic. Since then, her professional life has been devoted to the study of the pathology of renal diseases, particularly in children. It is no surprise to those who know her tremendous energy, her strong temperament, academic rigour and critical judgment that she has made major contributions to paediatric nephrology till her retirement in 1993 and even after. Her international reputation developed with the first symposium on renal biopsies organized by the CIBA Foundation in London in 1961 where she presented a paper on the pathological classification of the nephrotic syndrome from the Necker pathology laboratory: a star was born. The same year she participated in the first international course on paediatric nephrology organized by Professors Royer and Mathieu in the Centre International de L'Enfance in Paris, the basis of the first book on Paediatric Nephrology (P. Royer, R. Habib and H. Mathieu. Problemes atuels de nephrologie infantile 1963). From then on, she was involved in all the important international
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Oct 28, 2021
Kenneth T Farabaugh 
