Thomas Starzl
| Thomas Starzl | |
|---|---|
| Born | Thomas Earl Starzl March 11, 1926 Le Mars, Iowa |
| Died | March 4, 2017 (aged 90) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Residence | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Fields |
Transplantation surgery, Immunology |
| Institutions | University of Pittsburgh |
| Alma mater | BA, Westminster College, 1947 MD, Northwestern University, 1952 PhD, Northwestern University, 1952 |
| Known for | Performed the first human liver transplant in 1963 Developed the clinical applications of cyclosporin Contributed to the field of immunosuppression |
Thomas Earl Starzl (March 11, 1926 – March 4, 2017) was an American physician, researcher, and expert on organ transplants. He performed the first human liver transplants, and has often been referred to as "the father of modern transplantation."
Starzl was born on March 11, 1926, in Le Mars, Iowa, the son of newspaper editor and science fiction writer Roman Frederick Starzl and Anna Laura Fitzgerald who was a teacher and a nurse. He was the second of four siblings. Originally intending to become a priest in his teenage years, Starzl's plans changed drastically when his mother died from breast cancer in 1947.
He attended Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology. Starzl attended Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, where in 1950 he received a Master of Science degree in anatomy and in 1952 earned both a Ph.D. in neurophysiology and an M.D. with distinction. While attending medical school, he established a long friendship with Professor Loyal Davis, MD a neurosurgeon.
Starzl spent an extra year at medical school, using the additional time to complete a doctorate in neurophysiology, in 1952. He wrote a seminal paper describing a technique to record the electrical responses of deep brain structures to sensory stimuli such as a flash of light or a loud sound. The paper is highly cited.
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