Dr. Henry Lewis Barnett was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1914. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Washington University in 1934, and his medical degree in 1938. After graduation he briefly worked as a professor at Washington University. He is considered by many to be the father of pediatric nephrology.
In 1943, Barnett became the resident pediatrician at Los Alamos, treating the children of the Manhattan Project scientists working there. He served as a Captain in the Medical Section of Los Alamos. From 1943 to 1946 he served as both a First Lieutenant and Captain of the Medical Corps.
He also witnessed the Trinity Test, and traveled with the first American inspection team to Japan after the bombing of Nagasaki.
After the war, he became an assistant professor at Cornell University, until 1955. He then began the Pediatrics Department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He also led the Pediatrics Department at the Bronx Municipal Hospital. Additionally, he founded the International Study of Kidney Disease in Children. In 1981, he became the Medical Director of the Children’s Aid Society.
Barnett passed away in 2001 at the age of 87.