Murray, Joseph Edward, 1919–2012, American surgeon, b. Milford, Mass., M.D. Harvard, 1943. Trained as a plastic surgeon, Murray became interested in organ transplants, performing the first human kidney transplant in 1954 between two men who were identical twins. He continued to develop the process, helping to develop immunosuppressive drugs that made it easier for nonrelatives to be donors. For his pioneering work he was awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with E. Donnall Thomas. Murray also continued to work in plastic surgery, which became his main focus in later years, and developed procedures to correct inborn facial defects in children. He was associated with Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, from 1951 to 1986, and eventually headed the plastic surgery and transplant programs there; he also was plastic surgery chief at Boston's Children's Hospital and a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.
See his autobiography (2001).
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