Nobel winner Dr. Joseph Murray, who performed 1st successful kidney transplant, dies in Boston

BOSTON – A doctor who performed the world’s first successful kidney transplant and won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work has died in Boston. Dr. Joseph E. Murray was 93.

Murray’s death was confirmed Monday by Brigham and Women’s Hospital spokesman Tom Langford. No cause of death has been announced.

In the early 1950s, there had never been a successful human organ transplant. Murray and his associates at what was then Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital developed new surgical techniques after gaining knowledge by transplanting kidneys on dogs. In December 1954, they found the right human patients: a 23-year-old man with end-stage kidney failure and his identical twin.

After the operation, the sick twin had a functioning kidney transplanted from his brother. He lived another eight years, marrying a nurse he met at the hospital and having two children.