Norman Shumway

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Not to be confused with former Congressman of California's 11th congressional district Norman D. Shumway.

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Norman Shumway
Norman Shumway
Born	February 09, 1923 Kalamazoo, Michigan
Died	February 10, 2006 Palo Alto, California
Nationality	United States
Fields	Surgeon
Known for	Organ transplant Ciclosporin

Norman E. Shumway, M.D. (February 9, 1923 - February 10, 2006) was a pioneer of heart surgery at Stanford University. He was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

He was famous for being the first doctor to successfully carry out a heart transplant operation in the USA in 1968, after Christiaan Barnard's 1967 operation in South Africa. The early years of the procedure were chequered with few patients surviving for long after it finished. Shumway was the only American surgeon to continue performing the operation after others abandoned it after poor results.

In the 1970s he and his team refined the operation tackling the twin problems of rejection and the necessity for potentially dangerous drugs to suppress the immune system. In particular he pioneered the use of ciclosporin (cyclosporine) instead of traditional drugs, which made the operation much safer.

He attended the University of Michigan for one year as an undergraduate until he was drafted by the army in 1943, which sent him to John Tarleton Agriculture Junior College in Stephenville, Texas for engineering training. He then underwent Army Specialized Training, which included nine months of pre-medical training at Baylor University, followed by enrollment at Vanderbilt University for medical school. He received his M.D. from Vanderbilt in 1949. He did his residency at the University of Minnesota, and received a surgical PhD in 1956.

In his later years Shumway was the first recipient of the ([1]) Lifetime Achievement Award given by the International Society for Heart & Lung Transplantation and set up a ([2]) foundation to provide support and resources in education.

Shumway's marriage to the former Mary Lou Stuurmans ended in divorce. The couple had four children, one of whom directs heart and lung transplantation at the University of Minnesota.

He died of lung cancer in Palo Alto, California in 2006, on the day after his 83rd birthday.