Who performed the first successful human kidney transplant between identical twins?

Joseph Murray performed the first successful human kidney transplant between identical twins.

On December 23, 1954, Murray led a team at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston that transplanted a kidney from Ronald Herrick to his identical twin, Richard Herrick. Because the brothers were genetically identical, the recipient’s immune system did not reject the organ as it normally would a genetically different transplant.

The operation demonstrated that organ transplantation could provide long-term survival. Later advances in tissue matching and immunosuppressive drugs made transplantation possible between unrelated people. Murray shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with E. Donnall Thomas for discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation.