Schmid was a member of the Swiss national ski team from 1941 to 1945, and led the Academic Alpine Club while studying at the University of Zurich.

He graduated from medical school in 1947, and the next year helped organize an expedition to the Cordillera Blanca range in Peru for members of the Swiss Academic Club Alpine.

While pursuing advanced medical studies, Schmid married Sonja Wild in Sacramento, and naturalized as an American citizen in 1954, upon completing his degree.

Schmid was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, then worked for the National Institutes of Health before joining the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, a division of the Harvard Medical Unit at Boston City Hospital.

[4] Schmid died of pulmonary failure on 20 October 2007, at home in Kentfield, California, aged 85.