Edmund Randerath

Edmund Randerath (18 March 1899 – 19 March 1961) was a German nephropathologist who worked at the University of Heidelberg after World War II. Prior to that he conducted studies during the Nazi era and had been exonerated for his Nazi period activities. Randerath produced the first experimental evidence to support the idea that proteinuria was due to degeneration of the glomeruli.

Life and work

Randerath was born in Düsseldorf, the son of school principal. During World War I he enlisted and served on the French frontier and received an Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class medal. In 1919 he studied medicine at the Universities of Marburg and Düsseldorf, and received a doctorate from Cologne. He continued academic research in 1924 under Paul Hübschmann in Düsseldorf and wrote his habilitation thesis on skeletal tuberculosis (1932). In 1920 he served in the Freikorps fighting the Spartacists in Berlin.

Randerath's first major work was on skeletal tuberculosis which was based on the use of Thorotrast which led him to examine the fate of the thorium tracers. This led him to examine glomerular podocytes and capsular epithelial cells. He became interested in Bence Jones proteinuria. Nephrosis was considered to be caused by the nephron but Randerath suspected the glomeruli as the cause. Randerath conducted experiments in salamanders in 1938 by injecting the coelomic cavity with bovine serum, human serum, and serum from human patients with renal disease. His student Arno Hein conducted the experiments and published the results. He noted that the proteins were taken in by those glomeruli having a connection to the coelomic cavity and not by closed nephrons. Randerath's works had reduced influence due to post-war inhibitions towards German scientists by the wider scientific community and due to his works being published in German.