John S. Najarian, M.D., was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Surgery Department at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 1967. In 1985 he was also named a Regents' Professor, the University's highest honor, and in 1986 endowed with the Jay Phillips Distinguished Chair in Surgery.
Najarian forged one of the world's largest transplant programs, which has performed more than 6,500 kidney transplants; more than 1,900 pancreas transplants; and hundreds of heart, liver, lung, islet, bowel, and combined transplants. Under his leadership, the Minnesota program has pioneered innovative and difficult types of transplants; achieved unequaled success with diabetic, pediatric, and older patients; and made major research, clinical, and educational contributions to the field of surgery.
Internationally, he was admitted as an Honorary Fellow to the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1987--a rare distinction shared by only a handful of surgeons throughout the world. He achieved the highest honor possible in the realm of general academic surgery when he was elected President of the American Surgical Association (1988-89). He also was elected President (1994-96) and Vice President (1984-86) of the International Transplantation Society as well as President (1998-2000) of the International Pediatric Transplantation Association (IPTA). In addition, he received the Roche Pioneer Award, the most prestigious award given by the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS), in recognition of his lifetime contribution to transplantation (1999). His latest honor is the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the University of Minnesota Department of Surgery at the 40th anniversary celebration of its transplant program (2003).
Perhaps his crowning honor is the 2004 Medawar Prize (widely deemed the most prestigious award for outstanding achievement in organ transplantation), which Najarian accepted at the International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Vienna, Austria, in September 2004. He became a Medawar laureate for his monumental contributions to immunobiology, experimental transplantation, and clinical transplantation.
A 1948 honors graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Najarian went on to the University of California, San Francisco, where he earned his M.D. in 1952 and completed his general surgical training in 1960. He spent one year doing research in immunopathology at the University of Pittsburgh and one year in tissue transplantation immunology at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation. A Markle Scholar of Academic Medicine, he also served as Director of Surgical Research Laboratories and Chief of the Transplantation Service (1963-66) and then Professor and Vice Chairman (1966-67) of the Surgery Department at the University of California, San Francisco.
Currently an Associate Editor of American Journal of Surgery, and an Editorial Board member of 15 other medical journals, Najarian has published more than 1,300 articles and several books. He was the world's 14th most prolific scientist (articles published) and 9th most cited (articles referred to by other authors) for 1981-90, according to the Institute for Scientific Information. He continues as Professor of Surgery and Regents' Professor Emeritus at Fairview-University Medical Center, Minneapolis, actively devoted to his main passion: patient care.