Murray Performs the First Successful Organ Transplant
December 23, 1954: a kidney passed between identical twins, one brother's gift keeping the other alive
Quick facts
- Date
- December 23, 1954
- Surgeon
- Joseph Murray (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital)
- Patients
- Identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick
- Nobel Prize
- Murray, 1990 (with E. Donnall Thomas)
What happened
In late 1954 Richard Herrick, just 23, was dying of kidney failure. He had an identical twin brother, Ronald, which meant a transplanted kidney would be genetically matched and would not be rejected as foreign tissue, the obstacle that had defeated earlier attempts. On December 23, 1954, at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, a surgical team led by Joseph Murray transplanted one of Ronald's kidneys into Richard, with a separate team led by J. Hartwell Harrison operating on the donor. The operation gave Richard a new lease on life and ushered in the era of organ transplantation. Richard survived eight years before dying of heart failure; Ronald, the donor, lived more than fifty years after giving up a kidney. Murray received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990, together with Edward Donnall Thomas.
Why it matters
The Herrick transplant proved that an organ could be moved from one person to another and function, opening the field of transplantation. The identical-twin match sidestepped rejection, which pointed research toward the central later challenge, immunosuppression, that eventually allowed transplants between unrelated donors and made kidney, heart, liver, and lung transplants routine.
How we know
The 1954 operation, the roles of the surgical teams, the twins' outcomes, and Murray's 1990 Nobel Prize are documented in the hospital's and Harvard's historical accounts and in peer-reviewed profiles of Murray's career.
Sources
- Harvard Gazette (Harvard University). A transplant makes history · Reputable sourcenews.harvard.edu · The domain "news.harvard.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Journal (via PMC / U.S. National Library of Medicine). Joseph Murray (1919-2012): First transplant surgeon · Peer-reviewed (author-declared)pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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