Diseases of the kidney are old, but the discipline dedicated to their study, nephrology, is barely more than 50 years old. As recounted in this recollection of those events, the rudiments of what would become nephrology emerged in the time between the 2 World Wars from basic studies of normal kidney function and flourished after the integration of their methodologies into clinical medicine thereafter. Although shaped by studies of kidney function in the 1960s, it was the subsequent advent of dialysis that fueled the growth of nephrology well into the 21st century.