Joseph E. Murray, a basic scientific researcher and clinician, pioneered renal (kidney) transplantation. Since his first successful kidney transplant in 1954, over a quarter of a million have taken place worldwide. In 1990, the Nobel committee in Stockholm honored Murray for his work by awarding him the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.

Murray was born on April 1, 1919, in Milford, Massachusetts. The son of William Andrew Murray and Mary DePasquale Murray, he grew up and went to high school in Milford, excelling in baseball as well as science. He entered Holy Cross College upon graduation from high school and earned an A.B. in 1940, and then went on to Harvard University to earn his medical degree in 1943. At Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated hospital, Murray interned in surgery for one year before the U.S. Army gave him a commission in the Medical Corps and assigned him to Valley...