Christiaan Barnard

Born in Beaufort West in 1922, Barnard trained in South Africa and early on devised a fix for intestinal atresia in infants, saving ten babies in Cape Town and earning adoption abroad. In 1955 he went to Minnesota, where Owen Harding Wangensteen set him on gastrointestinal work until he shifted to Walt Lillehei's open-heart service and met the heart-lung machine. Back in Cape Town in 1958, he led experimental surgery at Groote Schuur, building toward the transplant that made his name. His second patient, Philip Blaiberg, lived a year and a half; Washkansky's 80% success estimate would later draw criticism as misleading. Rheumatoid arthritis forced him from the operating room in 1983, and in 1986 his reputation took a hit promoting Glycel, an anti-aging cream the FDA pulled soon after. He spent his final years running a foundation for underprivileged children and died in 2001 after an asthma attack.