Waldemar Kozuschek

Waldemar Kozuschek (1930 to 2009) was a German-Polish surgeon and university professor, remembered chiefly for performing the first kidney transplant in Poland, in 1965, and a successful kidney transplant from a living donor in 1966. Born in Gleiwitz, now Gliwice, he studied medicine at the University of Wrocław, trained in general surgery in that city, and earned his doctorate and then his habilitation at the Silesian Medical Academy in Katowice in 1970. By 1972 he had moved to West Germany and worked at the University of Bonn, and from 1975 he held posts at the Ruhr University Bochum, where he became full professor in 1978, served as vice dean and dean of the medical faculty between 1982 and 1985, and later founded an internationally known organ transplant center at the Bochum surgery clinic. He also helped found the German-Polish Society of the University of Wrocław. He died in Bochum.