PHYSICIANS from South Africa

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary South African Physicians of all time. This list of famous South African Physicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Christiaan Barnard (1922 - 2001)

With an HPI of 66.38, Christiaan Barnard is the most famous South African Physician.  His biography has been translated into 54 different languages on wikipedia.

Christiaan Neethling Barnard (8 November 1922 – 2 September 2001) was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident victim Denise Darvall into the chest of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky, who regained full consciousness and was able to talk easily with his wife, before dying 18 days later of pneumonia, largely brought on by the anti-rejection drugs that suppressed his immune system. Barnard had told Mr. and Mrs. Washkansky that the operation had an 80% chance of success, an assessment which has been criticised as misleading. Barnard's second transplant patient, Philip Blaiberg, whose operation was performed at the beginning of 1968, returned home from the hospital and lived for a year and a half. Born in Beaufort West, Cape Province, Barnard studied medicine and practised for several years in his native South Africa. As a young doctor experimenting on dogs, Barnard developed a remedy for the infant defect of intestinal atresia. His technique saved the lives of ten babies in Cape Town and was adopted by surgeons in Britain and the United States. In 1955, he travelled to the United States and was initially assigned further gastrointestinal work by Owen Harding Wangensteen at the University of Minnesota. He was introduced to the heart-lung machine, and Barnard was allowed to transfer to the service run by open heart surgery pioneer Walt Lillehei. Upon returning to South Africa in 1958, Barnard was appointed head of the Department of Experimental Surgery at the Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town. He retired as head of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Cape Town in 1983 after rheumatoid arthritis in his hands ended his surgical career. He became interested in anti-aging research, and in 1986 his reputation suffered when he promoted Glycel, an expensive "anti-aging" skin cream, whose approval was withdrawn by the United States Food and Drug Administration soon thereafter. During his remaining years, he established the Christiaan Barnard Foundation, dedicated to helping underprivileged children throughout the world. He died in 2001 at the age of 78 after an asthma attack.

2. David Cooper (1931 - 1986)

With an HPI of 52.33, David Cooper is the 2nd most famous South African Physician.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

David Graham Cooper (1931 in Cape Town, South Africa – 29 July 1986 in Paris, France) was a South African-born psychiatrist and theorist who was prominent in the anti-psychiatry movement. Cooper graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1955. R.D. Laing claimed that Cooper underwent Soviet training to prepare him as an anti-apartheid communist revolutionary, but after completing his course he never returned to South Africa out of fear that the Bureau of State Security would eliminate him. He moved to London, where he worked at several hospitals. From 1961 to 1965 he ran an experimental unit for young people with schizophrenia called Villa 21, which he saw as a revolutionary 'anti-hospital' and a prototype for the later Kingsley Hall Community. In 1965, he was involved with Laing and others in establishing the Philadelphia Association. An "existential Marxist," he left the Philadelphia Association in the 1970s in a disagreement over its lack of political orientation. Cooper coined the term "anti-psychiatry" in 1967, and wrote the book Psychiatry and Anti-psychiatry in 1971. He also co-founded the Antiuniversity of London in February 1968.