David K.C. Cooper, MD, PhD, FRCS,is a heart transplant surgeon and researcher. He completed his medical education at the University of London, then trained in general surgery and heart surgery in the U.K. with periods of research at Harvard, Cambridge, and London. In the late 1970s, he was a member of the team that performed the first successful series of heart transplants in the U.K. In 1980, Dr. Cooper was appointed to the faculty of the University of Cape Town Medical School in South Africa, where he had responsibility for the heart transplant program under Prof. Christiaan Barnard. In 1987 he moved to Oklahoma City, where he continued his work in heart transplantation and research, and… later accepted a research appointment at Harvard Medical School. During this time, he began meeting the pioneer surgeons who make up the personalities profiled in his book,Daring Young Men. Dr. Cooper has published almost 500 medical and scientific papers and chapters, and has edited or co-edited six major textbooks. He holds three doctorate degrees, and is a fellow of both the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the American College of Surgeons. He is now director of a research group at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he also is a professor of surgery.