Dr. Paul E. Teschan was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin December 15, 1923. He attended the University of Minnesota Medical School on an accelerated schedule, receiving in 1948 both his M.D and M.S. in physiology. He joined the Army Medical Service in 1948, and completed his internship at the University of Illinois Research and Educational Hospital, Chicago, in 1949, and a one-year residency in internal medicine at the Presbyterian Hospital of Chicago in 1950. With the advent of the Korean War, and the need to improve the mortality rate of casualties with acute renal failure, Dr. Teschan began a fellowship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston to receive training in treating renal failure with Kolff-Brigham rotating-drum dialyzer. Following this residency training, Dr. Teschan worked as a Ward Officer in the Metabolic Ward of the Department of Hepatic and Metabolic Diseases at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C. In 1952, he served the Chief of the Renal Center of the U.S. Army Surgical Research Team, at the 11th Evacuation Hospital of the 8th U.S. Army, in Korea and witnessed the mortality rate drop from 80-90% down to 53% with the use of the Kolff-Brigham dialyzer. Following the war, Dr. Teschan continued residency in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri, from 1953 to 1954. In 1954, he became Chief of the Renal Branch, at the U.S. Army Surgical Research Unit of Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas. It was here, and at his subsequent post at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where he conceived and perfected -- with colleagues from around the world familiar with the problems associated with dialysis -- the concept of prophylactic daily hemodialysis. From 1966 to 1969, he was Chief of the Department of Metabolism, Director of the Division of Medicine at Walter Reed. In 1969 he retired from army service with the rank of Colonel, and came to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine as Associate Professor of Urology and Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Medicine. Between 1977 and 1989 he also served as the Co-Medical Director of the Dialysis Clinics, Inc., Nashville. Dr. Teschan has more than 170 published original papers, editorials, monographs, and chapters, related to dialysis and general nephrology, with his main areas of interest being pathogenesis and prevention of acute renal failure. In 1993 he was elevated to the rank of Professor of Medicine Emeritus.