Louis Washkansky
Lithuanian-South African grocer (c. 1912–1967); recipient of the first human heart transplant
Louis Joshua Washkansky (12 April 1912 – 21 December 1967) was a South African man who was the recipient of the world's first human-to-human heart transplant, and the first patient to regain consciousness following the operation. Washkansky lived for 18 days and was able to speak with his wife and reporters.
Washkansky was the second human recipient of a heart transplant overall, in that James Hardy had done a transplant in 1964 in which Boyd Rush received a chimpanzee's heart, although the patient in that case only survived an hour and did not regain consciousness.
Biography
Washkansky was a Lithuanian Jew, the youngest of the four children of Abe Washkansky and his wife, Chana Yentel Kemelgor. In 1912, when Washkansky was three months old, his father emigrated to South Africa without his family and started a business as a produce merchant. As a result of World War I and its aftermath, Chana and the children were not able to re-unite with Abe in Cape Town until 1923. Washkansky attended Cape Town High School, where he passed the standard eight, before entering the grocery business in Cape Town. He saw active service in World War II in East and North Africa and Italy.
Washkansky was an avid sportsman. He took part in football, swimming, and weightlifting.
The public source identifies “Louis Washkansky” as lithuanian-South African grocer (c. 1912–1967); recipient of the first human heart transplant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Louis, Washkansky and Lithuanian-South.
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This entry incorporates text from “Louis Washkansky” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.