Carl W. Gottschalk

Carl William Gottschalk (1922 – October 15, 1997) was the Kenan Professor and Distinguished Research Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gottschalk made important discoveries about the function of the kidneys, and helped set government policies that provided dialysis to patients with kidney failure.

Born in Salem, Virginia in 1922, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Roanoke College in 1942, and attended a wartime medical school program at the University of Virginia. In 1945, Gottschalk was for six years a research fellow at Harvard University and an intern at Massachusetts General Hospital. He then joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as cardiology fellow and instructor in the School of Medicine; he remained at UNC until his retirement in 1992. He died on October 15, 1997.

Gottschalk's older brother, Walter Gottschalk, was a professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and Wesleyan University.

Throughout his career, Gottschalk published extensively about the kidney and about the history of kidney research. He is particularly known for his work using micropuncture techniques to study the kidney's ability to concentrate urine, and for the theory of countercurrent multiplication explaining this ability.

In 1967, Gottschalk chaired a U.S. government committee that recommended government support for kidney transplants and artificial kidney machines for patients with kidney failure. His efforts led to Medicare funding of dialysis for these patients, now provided to hundreds of thousands of patients. He also chaired another committee in 1987 concerned with medical ethics.

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