NOTEWORTHY DEATHS

— Kidney-transplant pioneer, Nobel winner

BOSTON -

Dr. Joseph E. Murray, who performed the world’s first successful kidney transplant and won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work, has died. He was 93.

Murray suffered a stroke at his suburban Boston home on Thanksgiving and died Monday at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, hospital spokesman Tom Langford said.

Since the first kidney transplants on identical twins, hundreds of thousands of transplants on a variety of organs have been performed worldwide. Murray shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 with Dr. E. Donnall Thomas, who won for his work in bone-marrow transplants.

In December 1954, they found the right human patients, 23-year-old Richard Herrick, who had end-stage kidney failure, and his identical twin, Ronald Herrick.

Because of their identical genetic background, they did not face the biggest problem with transplant patients, the immune system’s rejection of foreign tissue.

After the operation, Richard lived another eight years with a functioning kidney transplanted from Ronald, married a nurse he met at the hospital and had two children.

In 1962, Murray and his team completed the first successful organ transplant from an unrelated donor. Mel Doucette, 23, received a kidney from a man who had died.

Award-winning Broadway, film producer

NEW YORK -

Martin Richards, the Tony Award-winning producer behind such Broadway hits as On the Twentieth Century, Sweeney Todd, and The Will Rogers Follies, as well as an Academy Awardwinning producer of the film Chicago, has died after battling cancer, his publicist said Tuesday. He was 80.

Publicist Judy Jacksina said Richards died Monday.

Richards’ shows won 36 Tonys during his five decades as a producer.

“The popularity of his shows has brought many generations to Broadway. He wasan admirer of talent, and we were an admirer of his,” Charlotte St. Martin, the executive director of The Broadway League, said in a statement.

Richards produced the original Chicago on Broadway.

Richards, along with his late wife, Mary Lea Johnson Richards, was instrumental in founding Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids and Meals on Wheels. Richards also created the New York Center for Children to care for abused children and their families.

Richards is survived by his brother Bruce Klein; a niece, Lisa Kirschner; and a nephew, Sean Klein.

Arkansas, Pages 11 on 11/28/2012

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