Christiaan Barnard

He performed the first human-to-human heart transplant, on 3 December 1967 in Cape Town.

Christiaan Barnard was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967 he transplanted the heart of accident victim Denise Darvall into the chest of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky, who regained full consciousness but died 18 days later of pneumonia, largely brought on by the anti-rejection drugs that suppressed his immune system. His second transplant patient, Philip Blaiberg, returned home from the hospital and lived for a year and a half.

He developed a remedy for intestinal atresia that saved ten babies in Cape Town and was adopted in Britain and the United States.

As a young doctor experimenting on dogs, Barnard investigated intestinal atresia, a congenital, life-threatening obstruction of the intestines. He followed a hunch that it was caused by inadequate blood flow to the fetus, and after nine months and forty-three attempts he reproduced the condition in a puppy and cured it by removing the piece of intestine with inadequate blood supply. His method saved the lives of ten babies in Cape Town and was adopted by surgeons in Britain and the United States.