On December 3, 1967, Christiaan Barnard performed the first human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Driven by fierce ambition and shaped by a brother's early death from a heart defect, Barnard first made his name pioneering a surgery for a fatal intestinal condition in newborns.

The underdog with the worst animal-survival statistics won the transplant race by daring to leap to human trials before rivals who waited for immunology to catch up. His first patient survived 18 days before dying of pneumonia caused by primitive anti-rejection drugs. Barnard's later piggyback technique kept the field alive, though his legacy is tangled with ethical and political contradictions.

• He injected potassium to stop the donor's heart, ensuring a legal flatline before transplant.
• He told his dy ...