Dr. Ludwig's rather reserved nature, quiet style, and hesitant smile belied the numerous friends and acquaintances he had at the University. People were attracted to him because of his unusual combination of interests and talents and the analytical consideration that he gave to issues. Working in an environment of science, medicine and quantitation, he was among the few who were also literary scholars, gifted linguists, conversationalists and humanists. He fostered discussion soirees among his friends, with student groups at his home and at "Ludwig's faculty table" at the University Club.
Dr. Ludwig's background provides the clue to his talents. The son of a merchant-captain in Germany, in College he embarked in literature, history and languages. His first two publications were on the classical Sonnet, and a prize winning translation of Voltaire's "Micromegas with remarks on the philosophy of French enlightenment." He read Latin, and spoke, lectured and published in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Italian. It follows that his investigations included quantitating aging, "Faith and Science", "Pathology in Historical Perspective", "Senescence, Pathology's Ultimate Issue", etc. He lived for ten days as a lay monk in a Benedictine Monastery as preparation for his lecture: "The Moral Limits of Scientific Research".
World War II moved him into Medicine and an M.D. from the University of Tuebingen from whence the scientific part of his life evolved. His residency training and first academic position was in Pathology at the University of Paris. He did some early isotope research leading to studying under Nobel laureate Mme. M. Curie and a Doctor of Science (radiation) from the Sorbonne. He was briefly the Section Chief of Experimental Biology of the French Atomic Energy Commission, but then pursued further research training which led him to the USA, the Rockefeller Foundation, University of Pennsylvania, and finally the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine in 1958.
The scientific facet of his life matured in the U.C. system. His early publications concerned leukemia, the impact of ionizing radiation on the bone marrow, methods of biologically quantifying radiation dosage, probing factors, especially the reticuloendothelial system, to protect irradiated animals. He was among the first to observe the abscopic phenomena of whole body irradiation. That led to a new direction of his research, using rodent surgical parabiosis and their marrow responses to irradiation. On the basis of his training and research, he always held joint faculty appointments in the Departments of Pathology (primarily) and Radiology.
Parabiosis studies led Dr. Ludwig to explore the effects of age differences on each of the joined animals. That model offered many opportunities for study and reporting on the factors influencing the aging of mammals and of organs. Fred showed that a young animal parabiont to an old one, extended the expected life of the older, and probed various parameters to account for that fact. He found that the basement membrane thickness of capillaries, especially in the kidney, was a good indicator of the true "biological" vis a vis "chronological" age. His research on aging not unexpectedly wakened his earlier humanistic and philosophic interests including the Rockefeller Conference Center at Bellagio, Italy that he organized on "Life Extension: consequences and open questions", and related papers.
Fred was always proud of being a professor and cherished the implications of that calling. He was on the Editorial Board of several journals in his field. He thoroughly enjoyed teaching and prepared his lectures carefully. He always knew his section students by name, he expected a lot from them, and yet he was one of their most liked teachers. He believed in the Academic Senate and generously served on numerous committees as chair or opinion leader. He especially supported academic excellence and deplored what he called the "dumbing down" of requirements of excellence whether for student or faculty.
Dr. Ludwig was born in 1924 in Bad Nauheimn, Germany, was a U.S. citizen and a member of U.C.'s faculty for thirty seven years. His chapter was closed in November 1995 in his 71st year by a recurrent coronary thrombosis. He will be missed as a very special person by his many friends and admirers. He is survived by his former wife Francine, four sons, Christopher, Alexis, Francis, Oliver, and one grandchild.
Warren L. Bostick, M.D.