UC Riverside Figure : E.A. Noltmann, Medical Education Pioneer, Dies

Ernst A. Noltmann, the director of UC Riverside’s Division of Biomedical Sciences who established in conjunction with UCLA a program to grant medical school students their MD degrees in seven years rather than the traditional eight, is dead of cancer at age 54.

Under the program he helped establish in 1974, students train at UC Riverside for five years and complete their sixth and seventh at UCLA School of Medicine. The program involves future physicians involved in primary care studies and spans the entire spectrum of diseases.

Under Noltmann’s auspices and despite many funding struggles, the program was fully accredited by the Assn. of American Colleges in 1978, said Richard Luben, acting director of the biomedical sciences division.

Noltmann, who died Feb. 26, was born in Germany where he received his medical degrees, joining the Institute of Physiological Chemistry at the Medical Academy of Dusseldorf. He came to the University of Wisconsin in 1959 for postdoctoral study and to Riverside as an assistant professor in 1962.

Survivors include his widow, Lisel, and two sons.