Dr. Julian Seifter, the Haidas Family and Julian L. Seifter Distinguished Chair in Medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, author of over 150 scientific papers in The New England Journal of Medicine and elsewhere, and an internationally renowned expert on the kidney, died October 24, 2025 from complications of Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.
For four decades as a clinical nephrologist and educator, Dr. Seifter was an expert in the management of chronic kidney diseases, a noted international authority in acid base physiology, and the recipient of numerous honors for outstanding teaching and clinical work, including as the inaugural electee to the Academy at Harvard Medical School and as Associate Master and Senior Advisor of the Walter Bradford Cannon Academic Society. In addition to authoring 150 academic reviews, monographs, and case reports in the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Physiology, and many other publications, Dr. Seifter also wrote textbooks on renal physiology and seminal chapters in Harrison’s and Cecil Goldman’s Textbooks of Medicine, and was a speaker on medical ethics and the Nazi salt water experiments at the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg Doctor Trials.
A former sprinter and football player at New Rochelle High School, a fisherman, sailor, naturalist, and avid collector of everything from baseball memorabilia to butterflies, Dr. Seifter had a gusto for life that he shared with his loved ones.
“He wanted to taste everything in life,” his nephew Austin Ratner, with whom he co-authored a physiology textbook, said. “Once when we were fishing together, he tasted the bait. He taught me to throw a baseball and to catch a toad on the same dusty road in Amagansett when I was a kid and told me dozens of stories of his life from his childhood in New Rochelle to his travels across Mexico on a motorcycle to his days in the Merchant Marines in the South China Sea. As a doctor he had the best bedside manner I ever saw. He would give you a diagnosis and immediately after, in the sanest, calmest way, he would give you the plan. He always made you feel that no matter what the problem, there was always something that could be done to make it better.”
Dr. Seifter attended Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, where he met his wife Betsy (Weisberger) Seifter. He received his medical degree in 1975 at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, completing a fellowship in nephrology at Yale New Haven Hospital before joining the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School faculty in 1982.
Humanism and a love of knowledge infused Dr. Seifter’s teaching of generations of Harvard and MIT medical students, Brigham and Women’s house staff, renal and internal medicine fellows, and junior faculty. Dr. Seifter won numerous awards at Harvard as a tutor, course leader, and mentor at every level of medical education, as well as awards for gender equity and compassionate care. He also taught at medical centers in Russia, China, Taiwan, Norway, Mexico, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, England, Ireland, Germany, and Austria,
In his book “After the Diagnosis: Transcending Chronic Illness,” which he wrote with his wife Betsy, an author, Dr. Seifter brought his own experiences with chronic illness to the stories of his patients, detailing with humor and compassion the nature of the doctor-patient relationship. The ideas captured in this book – that doctors are treating human beings, not diseases, and that for treatment to work it must meet people where they are – is a lesson for all walks of life, not just medicine. As he put it, relaying struggles to manage his own diabetes in an interview with The New York Times, “Good control means trying to duplicate what the pancreas does, and I never really wanted to become my pancreas.” Dr. Seifter continued, through the course of serious chronic illness and in the face of great personal loss, to forge a rich and meaningful life, continually sought after for consultations by colleagues and patients up until two months before his death.
Dr. Seifter’s collections of extraordinary memorabilia were not just markers of a fascinating life, but a jumping off point for exploring the world with those he loved.
Included in his wide collection are autographs from Jackie Robinson, whose family he knew, microscopes from the world’s most esteemed doctors, and draft cards from beloved classmates lost in the Vietnam war. He also had the bat Roger Maris used to hit his 55th home run in his record-breaking 1961 season. Though a Brooklyn Dodgers fan as a child, Dr. Seifter would often sneak into old Yankees Stadium. He acquired the bat from one of the batboys he knew there. A gifted baseball player himself, he used the bat for over a year in his own games, explaining to one of his nephews that he had to use it “because it was such a good bat.”
Dr. Seifter is survived by his wife, co-author (and often co-captain) Betsy, his son Andrew, daughter-in-law Lori, granddaughter Ellie, his sister Madeleine, sisters- and brothers-in-law he treasured, and nieces and nephews for whom he was the beloved Uncle J. He shared his love of Boston, sports, and the natural world with his younger son Charlie, who pre-deceased him in 2016.
