Joseph Murray

Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon, born in Milford, Massachusetts, on April 1, 1919, the son of a lawyer and district court judge and a schoolteacher. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1940, where he studied Greek, Latin, English and philosophy despite a strong interest in science, and entered Harvard Medical School in September 1940. He is known as the father of transplantation for major milestones in the field, including performing the first successful human kidney transplant, defining brain death, organizing the first international conference on human kidney transplants and founding the National Kidney Registry, the forerunner of the United Network for Organ Sharing. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 with E. Donnall Thomas for discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation, and he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He died on November 26, 2012.