After his military service, Murray completed his general surgical residency, and joined the surgical staff of the
Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. He then went to New York to train in plastic surgery at New York and Memorial Hospitals, returning to the Brigham as a member of the surgical staff in 1951. Many of his peers discounted his pursuit, believing that the problem of immune rejection was insurmountable, Murray was a practicing Catholic and faith played a role in his professional as well as his personal life. During preparations for the first transplant surgery, Murray and his team consulted clergy of all denominations while weighing the ethical issues of the procedure. On December 23, 1954, Murray performed the world's first successful renal transplant between the identical Herrick twins at the
Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (''later
Brigham and Women's Hospital''), an operation that lasted five and a half hours. He was assisted by
J. Hartwell Harrison and other noted physicians. In Operating Room 2 of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Murray transplanted a healthy kidney donated by Ronald Herrick into his twin brother Richard, who was dying of chronic nephritis. Richard lived for eight more years following the operation, long enough to get married and have two children before succumbing to cardiac failure eight years later. His donor brother Ronald had no major complications and lived over 50 years after the surgery. Murray partnered with Nobel prize laureates Drs.
George H. Hitchings and
Gertrude B. Elion, both at
Burroughs-Wellcome, who recognized the immunosuppressive capacities of 6–Mercaptopurin (6-MP) and synthesized the first
immunosuppressive drugs. Together, they tailored the new drug
Imuran (generic
azathioprine) for use in transplants. The discovery of Imuran and other anti-rejection drugs, such as
prednisone, allowed Murray to carry out transplants from unrelated donors. In 1962, Murray performed the first successful deceased donor (cadaveric) kidney transplant treated with Imuran, a derivate of 6-MP and steroids. By 1965, the survival rates after receiving a kidney transplant from an unrelated donor exceeded 65%, and today the success rate for a kidney transplant from a living donor is 90–95% after one year and the transplanted kidney lasts 15 to 20 years on average. Murray worked on all the steps necessary to establish organ transplantation as the clinical treatment of choice for patients with irreversible organ failure. In 1962, Murray led the organization of the first international conference on human kidney transplants in 1962, followed by the founding of the
National Kidney Registry, the forerunner of the current
United Network Of Organ Sharing (UNOS). In 1967, he participated in defining brain death, when Robert Ebert, the Dean of the
Harvard Medical School convened a group of physicians, ethicists, and legal scholars to examine the characteristics of a permanently nonfunctioning brain, and Dr Murray was a member of that committee, which included famed neurosurgeon William Sweet, neurologist Raymond Adams, and legal scholar William J. Curran. The work of this committee led to consistent criteria that could be applied prospectively to declare death and ultimately to the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) in 1981. As a Harvard Medical School faculty member, Murray trained physicians from around the world in transplantation and reconstructive surgery, frequently performing surgeries in developing countries. In his 20 years as director of the Surgical Research Laboratory at
Harvard and as chief of transplant surgery from 1951 to 1971at the
Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (which later became
Brigham and Women's Hospital), he inspired others who became leaders in transplantation and biology throughout the world. Notwithstanding his pioneering work in human transplantation, Murray's true passion was still reconstructive surgery. In choosing between the two, he decided to step down as chief of transplant surgery at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1971 to focus on paediatric reconstructive surgery, becoming the chief of plastic surgery from 1972 to 1985 at the
Boston Children's Hospital Medical Center in
Boston,
Massachusetts. He developed procedures for repairing birth defects and treating paediatric burn victims. Murray retired as professor of Surgery Emeritus in 1986 from
Harvard Medical School after recovering from a small stroke. ==Awards and recognitions==