Pioneer of heart transplant surgery who refined a procedure to stop the body from rejecting the transplant.
After being drafted into the army, he studied engineering, though later switched to Medicine at Vanderbilt University.
His first successful heart transplant, performed in Stanford on a South African surgeon, became the world's first successful transplant and opened many possibilities for Future doctors.
One of his children with his former wife, Mary Lou Stuurmans, went on to direct heart and lung transplantations at the University of Minnesota.
The South African Christiaan Barnard made the first heart transplant ever performed in 1953.
