Professor and Dean Emeritus Rudi Schmid died in his sleep on October 20. He was 85.

During his long and varied career, Dr. Schmid achieved great eminence as a scholar, educator and academic leader. His enormous impact on UCSF was recognized most recently with the UCSF Medal, the University's highest honor, awarded to him last year. He was among the leaders who transformed UCSF from a good health sciences campus to one of the world's great biomedical institutions.

The son of physician parents, Dr. Schmid was born in Switzerland, where he became an accomplished mountaineer and outstanding skier. He was a member of the Swiss national ski team for three years, from 1941 to 1944. He was educated in medicine at the University of Zurich and first came to UCSF for his clinical training in 1948 and 1949.

He joined the UCSF faculty in 1966 as director of the Division of Gastroenterology in the Department of Medicine and founder of the Liver Center. He led the division to establish UCSF as one of the world's leading institutions for research, education and clinical care in gastroenterology and hepatology.

In 1983, he became dean, a position in which he served for six years. Dr. Schmid fostered curricular reform, growth of the UCSF research enterprise, the rise to eminence of our graduate programs in basic science, and an interdisciplinary spirit that remains to this day.

Upon stepping down as dean, he was appointed associate dean of International Relations in the schools of medicine and pharmacy. Schmid remained an active participant in a program he founded to increase the international impact of UCSF and foster friendly working relationships by bringing trainees from China to UCSF. Read a story about the student exchange program here.

Among his many honors were election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the German Academy of Sciences and the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences. He was also a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His survivors include his widow, Sonja, daughter Isabelle, son Peter and many friends.

Plans for a memorial service at UCSF will be announced.

To learn more about Dr. Schmid's career and impact:

UCSF Oral History Program:

Interviews with Rudi Schmid, M.D., Ph.D - Balancing Science and Education Within the School of Medicine.

One of UCSF's most powerful campus personalities, Rudi Schmid tells of his early years in neutral Switzerland, and how mountain climbing and skiing brought him career opportunities, first as an intern at UCSF, and later to study porphyrins at Minnesota with C. J. Watson. The interview covers his path breaking work in porphyrins and bilirubin metabolism at some length. When he was appointed dean of the School of Medicine in 1983, he was well aware that the campus community expected him to be the "pure research" dean. Here Dr. Schmid reveals his interest and concern for reform in medical education and the development of the new instructional patterns on campus. His story also delineates his forceful support of basic science on campus that culminated in the creation of the Program in Biological Sciences, PIBS.