- For the former commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, see Joseph Philip Robert Murray.
Joseph E. Murray (born 1919), U.S. surgeon, performed the first human kidney transplant. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for work on organ and cell transplantation.
After graduating from Harvard Medical School, Murray joined the army where he studied surgery at Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania.
On December 23 1954 Murray and J. Hartwell Harrison carried out the first successful kidney transplant at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. A kidney was transplanted into Richard Herrick from his identical twin brother Ronald . Several other surgeries involving identical twins followed. In the 1960s, the discovery of anti-rejection drugs such as azathioprine allowed Murray to carry out transplants from unrelated donors.
Surgery Of The Soul
Joseph Murray's autobiography, which doubles as a story of 14 patients and how, together, they overcame huge medical challenges which advanced the knowledge of these areas in ways which help millions of people today.
Camel Red
Joseph Murray is featured in the book Camel Red which is the story of Larry Heron, who was very seriously injured in World War II, and his road to recovery, on which he is reunited with Joseph Murray whom he used to go to school with.
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