A five-hour operation, compared to the first landing on the moon, turned South African Christiaan Barnard into a hero overnight when he became the first surgeon in the world to successfully transplant a heart.

That milestone was three decades ago, but the former playboy surgeon's outlook remained as youthful as ever upto his death on holiday in Cyprus at 78. He fathered a baby daughter at age 74 with his wife Karin who is 41 years younger than him, he ran restaurants and a farm, cultivated crayfish and wrote novels in his spare time. That was after severe arthritis forced Mr. Barnard in 1983 to cut short his surgical career. With his groundbreaking operation on December 3, 1967, in Cape Town's Groote Schuur hospital the son of a Protestant Dutch missionary did not only change his own life, but his work helped to prolong many people's lives in the years to come.

Although 55-year-old Lous Washkansky died of pneumonia 18 days after the first human heart transplant, it looked as if surgeons all over the world had just waited for Mr. Barnard's courageous move. But many successful efforts were to follow, once doctors learned to cope with problems of the immune system that is likely to recognise the new organ as a hostile intruder. Some patients have even survived for more than 20 years with their donor hearts. To date more than 40,000 people have received heart transplants.

In 1971, Mr. Barnard hit the headlines again when he pioneered in a `domino operation', as nowadays fairly common multiple transplants are called. The patient who received a heart and a new lung at the same time died shortly afterwards. Three years later, he came up with another innovation where the transplant patient keeps his old heart next to the new organ.Mr. Barnard's fame was not only limited to medical circles. The good-looking surgeon was well in demand by the glitterati and quickly became a well-known member of the international jet set with his name all over the gossip columns.

- DPA