He is primarily known for his work on the mechanisms of organic solute transport in kidney tubules, but he is also known for work to describe transport of organic solutes across epithelial membranes by marine invertebrates.
[1] He received bachelor's and master's degrees in biological sciences at the University of California, Davis studying in the laboratory John H. Crowe.
For several years thereafter, he held post-doctoral positions at the University of California, Los Angeles in the laboratories of Jared Diamond and Ernest M. Wright studying ionic and organic solute transport mechanisms in intestinal and kidney tubule epithelia.
On 18 July 1978 shortly after finishing graduate school at Irvine, he married biologist Janis Mae Burt,[2][3] Both Wright and Burt joined the faculty of the University of Arizona.
While on the faculty of the University of Arizona he distinguished himself as a leading researcher in renal and transport physiology with three decades of funding by the National Institutes of Health, studying the renal transport of organic anions and cations at several different levels of biological organization.