William Schwartz

Who was William Schwartz?

William Benjamin Schwartz was a pioneering nephrologist who identified rising costs of health care as an incipient problem as early as the 1980s.

Schwartz attended Duke University after serving in the Army in World War II, earning undergraduate and medical degrees. His pioneering observation that the antibiotic sulfanilamide increased excretion of sodium in patients with heart failure led to the discovery and development of modern diuretic drugs. The Lancet.

Early in his career, he joined what is now Tufts Medical Center, and founded its Division of Nephrology in 1950. He served as its head until 1971, following which he became the Chairman of Medicine and chief physician at Tufts, positions he held until 1976. Then, he left his administrative position at the medical center, becoming the Vannevar Bush University Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and Professor of Medicine until joining the faculty of the University of Southern California Medical School in 1992.

Beginning in the 1970s, Schwartz developed an interest in medical decision-making, and was an early researcher into artificial intelligence applications to medicine.