Eberhard Ritz is affiliated with the Department of Internal Medicine, Ruperto Carola University Heidelberg.  He studied medicine in the medical schools of Heidelberg, Munich and Montpellier and then worked at the Department of Internal Medicine Zürich (Switzerland) and subsequently as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Biochemistry, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.  Since 1967 he has worked in the Department of Internal Medicine University of Heidelberg where he was promoted to become Professor of Internal Medicine in 1974 then Chief of Division of Nephrology in 1977.  He has been Professor Emeritus since 2003.

His main interests concern calcium metabolism in renal failure, hypertension and the kidney, diabetic nephropathy and cardiac problems in renal failure.  He is past-president of the Gesellschaft für Nephrologie and past-council member of the European Renal Association.  He was president of the World Congress of Nephrology in June 2003 in Berlin.  He is an honorary member of the European Renal Association and of the Australian, British, Czech, French, Italian, Polish, Spanish and South African Societies of Nephrology. He is a member of the American College of Physicians and the Royal College of Physicians both in London and in Edinburgh.  He is recipient of the distinguished investigator medal of the National Kidney Foundation, the Wissenschaftspreis der Deutschen Hochdruckliga and the Bundesverdienstkreuz of the German government.  He is Dr.h.c. of the Silesian School of Medicine, the Pomeranian School of Medicine and of Semmelweis University Budapest/Hungary, and recipient of the Jacob Henle medal of the University of Göttingen.  He received the John P. Peters award of the American Society of Nephrology in 2003.  He is editor-in-chief emeritus of Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation and past-associate editor of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. He is immediate past-president of the International Society of Nephrology.