Born in Chicago in 1925, Russell received his medical degree from the University of Chicago in 1947 before beginning his surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital. His residency was interrupted by two years of service in the United States Air Force during the Korean conflict. It was during that period that he met and married Allene, who would become his lifelong companion and a familiar presence to many members of the transplantation community at international congresses.

The direction of his professional life changed in the early 1950s when he encountered the work of Peter Medawar, Rupert Billingham and Leslie Brent on actively acquired immunological tolerance. Russell later recalled that this discovery was what first attracted him to transplantation.

He approached Medawar in 1953 and asked to join his small laboratory at University College London. Medawar, Russell recalled with characteristic self-deprecation, was initially reluctant to take on an “ignorant young surgeon”, but eventually agreed. Russell joined the laboratory in 1954 as Medawar’s first foreign student.

The timing was extraordinary. The biological basis of transplant rejection was only beginning to be understood. As Russell remembered 50 years later, scientists knew nothing of T- and B-cell subclasses, little of the function of the thymus, and had not yet conceived of cytokines or the complex cellular interactions now fundamental to immunology.

Russell worked closely with Medawar on transplantation and immunological tolerance, beginning an intellectual pursuit that would remain central to his research for the rest of his career.

Building Clinical and Scientific Transplantation

Russell returned to the United States, completed his surgical training, spent a brief period at Columbia University, and in 1962 returned to Massachusetts General Hospital as Chief of Surgery. There he established an exceptionally productive transplantation laboratory while simultaneously helping advance clinical transplantation.

In 1963, he initiated the clinical transplantation program at Mass General with the hospital’s first kidney transplant.

Russell’s scientific contributions extended across an extraordinary range of the developing field: early work in marrow transplantation for leukemia; studies of trophoblast antigenicity and graft-versus-host disease; investigation of antilymphocyte sera and their immunosuppressive properties; the development of microsurgical models of organ transplantation; and important work on the immunological mechanisms underlying chronic graft vascular disease.

But perhaps his greatest scientific characteristic was his ability to move effortlessly between the laboratory and the patient. When Benedict Cosimi introduced Russell at the 2004 TTS Congress, he observed that Russell’s ability to work “at the interface between basic science and clinical applications” gave him a unique capacity to raise the scientific standard of the entire field.

That philosophy was also visible in Russell’s work on immunological tolerance. Half a century after first entering Medawar’s laboratory, he remained fascinated by the possibility that transplantation might one day be achieved without lifelong immunosuppression.

“I am a firm believer in the great possibilities of tolerance induction for our patients.”

It was the perspective of a scientist who had spent a lifetime asking not simply whether something could work, but why it worked — and where it might fail.

A Builder of the Transplant Community

Russell also understood very early that successful transplantation would require more than surgical and immunological advances. In 1968 he founded the Boston Interhospital Organ Bank, serving as its first chairman. It became the New England Organ Bank and ultimately New England Donor Services, helping establish a model for the organized recovery and sharing of donated organs.

His influence was equally profound through mentorship. Russell’s laboratory trained generations of surgeons and scientists who themselves went on to become leaders of transplantation. His students and colleagues included many of the individuals who subsequently shaped transplantation biology, immunology and clinical practice internationally.

His influence therefore extends far beyond the work bearing his own name.

Thomas Starzl once captured Russell’s unusual combination of qualities by describing the surgeon-scientist, Socratic educator, disciplined investigator and “Bostonian gentleman” that his colleagues had come to know.

Even when Russell ostensibly retired from transplantation in 1990, retirement proved largely nominal: he continued as a teacher, administrator and active investigator.

The Medawar Prize

In 2004, at the XX Congress of The Transplantation Society in Vienna, Russell returned to a subject with which his career had begun 50 years earlier. Together with John Najarian and Richard Simmons, he received the Medawar Prize, TTS’s highest scientific distinction, awarded for outstanding contributions to transplantation and immune biology.

For Russell, the honor was deeply personal. It bore the name of his teacher, Sir Peter Medawar, TTS’s first President and the scientist whose work had drawn a young surgeon into the still uncertain world of transplantation.

“Thank you again for this fine award. The name it bears makes it all the more valuable to me.”

— Paul S. Russell, Medawar Prize Acceptance Speech, 2004

A Life Spanning the History of Modern Transplantation

Paul Russell’s life encompassed virtually the entire history of modern transplantation. He entered medicine when rejection remained an unsolved biological mystery and lived to see transplantation become routine therapy, tolerance move from experimental concept toward clinical reality, and genetically modified organs begin to challenge the boundaries of what could be transplanted.

In one interview, when asked what transplantation might achieve in the future, he answered with the same optimism that had characterized a lifetime spent pushing beyond what medicine believed possible:

“Some I wouldn’t even be able to imagine, but I think in years to come, it’ll probably be easier, I hope, for the patient. It’s going to be wonderful.”

For the members of The Transplantation Society, Paul Russell leaves more than a remarkable scientific legacy. He was part of the generation that created our field, built our Society and trained those who would carry both forward.

We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, colleagues, students and the many generations of transplant professionals whose lives and careers he influenced.

The transplantation community has lost one of its pioneers.
The Transplantation Society has lost one of its own.