Fikri Alican

Fikri Alican
Fikri Alican (age 26) in May 1955
Born	(1929-04-02)2 April 1929 Adapazarı, Sakarya, Turkey
Died	19 August 2015(2015-08-19) (aged 86) Istanbul, Turkey
Resting place	Adapazarı, Sakarya, Turkey
Residence	Turkey United States
Nationality	Turkish
Fields	Medicine, physiology, general surgery, organ transplantation
Institutions	Istanbul University University of Mississippi
Education	Robert College (B.S., 1949) Istanbul University (M.D., 1955) University of Mississippi (M.S., 1962)
Known for	Laboratory and clinical research in the transplantation of the liver, lungs, and small intestines; studies in physiology, most notably in transplantation biology and in the physiology of shock
Influences	James D. Hardy Arthur C. Guyton
Spouse	Halide Alican (1960–2015, his death)
Children	Necip Fikri Alican Fuat Varol Alican

Fikri Alican (2 April 1929 – 19 August 2015) was a Turkish scientist and physician with various contributions to medical science, ranging from organ transplantation to physiology.

Alican was born in Adapazarı, a city in northwestern Turkey, 150 km east of Istanbul. He left his hometown after middle school, attending high school and college in Istanbul, where he graduated from Robert College with a B.S. (1949) and from Istanbul University with an M.D. (1955). He did his residency at the Istanbul University Medical Center's Clinic of Treatment and Exploratory Surgery, also known as Surgical Clinic #4, headed by Şinasi Hakkı Erel. It is there that he met his future wife, Halide Ihlamur, later Halide Alican, a surgical nurse working at the same clinic.

After completing his residency in general surgery at Istanbul University, his growing interest in the field of organ transplantation, then in its heyday, took him to Jackson, Mississippi, where he joined the University of Mississippi team leading the world in transplantation research, including the first lung transplant (11 June 1963) and the first heart transplant (23 January 1964), under the leadership of James D. Hardy. A few weeks after his arrival there in the summer of 1960, he proposed to Ihlamur, as he always called her, even after she took his name and dropped hers, and they got married in Jackson in November 1960, remaining married for fifty-five years (1960–2015) until his death at age eighty-six. He also obtained a master's degree (M.S., 1962) in physiology at the University of Mississippi, studying with Arthur C. Guyton, while working as a research fellow (soon to become a research associate) in Hardy's department of surgery.

Best known for his work in organ transplantation, though with some notable initiatives in physiology as well, Alican later established a successful private practice as a general surgeon. His professional career was divided between medical research in the United States and private practice in Turkey.

Alican's main contributions came in the 1960s (1960–1971) when he worked at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in the pioneering days of laboratory research and clinical studies in organ transplantation. His research focused largely on the lungs and on the liver, though he is also known for his work on intestinal transplantation. He performed the first ever simultaneous bilateral lung transplantation in canines, one of many such operations paving the way for the procedure in humans.