[3] Vladimir P. Demikhov was born on July 31, 1916,[4] into a family of Russian peasants living on a small farmstead in the northern part of Russia's Volgograd region.

[1] In 1934, Demikhov began studying at the Voronezh State University, where in 1937 he created the world's first artificial heart and successfully implanted it into a dog (which survived for two hours after the surgery).

[1] After the war, Demikhov resumed his post in the human physiology department at Moscow State University,[4][5] where he continued his experimental research, eventually performing successful heart and lung transplants on warm-blooded animals.

[1] His transplantation work was widely reported inside the Soviet Union, where it was continuously criticized for being unethical, but it was not until the late 1950s that news of his experiments spread to the outside world.

[1][8] Later translated into English (1962),[9] German (1963)[10] and Spanish (1967),[11] this became a hugely influential publication for physicians interested in the emerging field of organ and tissue transplantation, and was for some considerable time the only monograph on the subject.

[6] One particular admirer of his work was South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who became convinced through studying Demikhov's experiments that human heart transplantation was a real possibility.

Barnard twice visited Demikhov's laboratory in Moscow, in 1960 and 1963, and inspired by his observations there, he successfully performed the world's first heart transplant operation from one person to another in 1967.

[1][6] Although he had received various honors later in life, including a USSR State Prize, the true value of Demikhov's experiments was not acknowledged by Russia until the year of his death, when he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd class, shortly before he died.