Barnard grew up in Beaufort West, Cape Province, Union of South Africa. His father, Adam Barnard, was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. One of his four brothers, Abraham, was a "blue baby" who died of a heart problem at the age of three (Barnard would later guess that it was tetralogy of Fallot). The family also experienced the loss of a daughter who was stillborn and who had been the fraternal twin of Barnard's older brother Johannes, who was twelve years older than Chris.
Historical context
Following the first successful kidney transplant in 1953, in the United States, Barnard performed the second kidney transplant in South Africa in October 1967, the first being done in Johannesburg the previous year.  On 23 January 1964, James Hardy at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, performed the world's first heart transplant and world's first cardiac xenotransplant by transplanting the heart of a chimpanzee into a desperately ill and dying man. This heart did beat in the patient's chest for approximately 60 to 90 minutes. The patient, Boyd Rush, died without ever regaining consciousness.  Barnard had experimentally transplanted forty-eight hearts into dogs, which was about a fifth the number that Adrian Kantrowitz had performed at Maimonides Medical Center in New York and about a sixth the number Norman Shumway had performed at Stanford University in California. Barnard had no dogs which had survived longer than ten days, unlike Kantrowitz and Shumway who had had dogs survive for more than a year.  With the availability of new breakthroughs introduced by several pioneers, also including Richard Lower at the Medical College of Virginia, several surgical teams were in a position to prepare for a human heart transplant. Barnard had a patient willing to undergo the procedure, but as with other surgeons, he needed a suitable donor.  During the Apartheid era in South Africa, non-white persons and citizens were not given equal opportunities in the medical professions. At Groote Schuur Hospital, Hamilton Naki was an informally taught surgeon. He started out as a gardener and cleaner. One day he was asked to help out with an experiment on a giraffe. From this modest beginning, Naki became principal lab technician and taught hundreds of surgeons, and assisted with Barnard's organ transplant program. Barnard said, "Hamilton Naki had better technical skills than I did. He was a better craftsman than me, especially when it came to stitching, and had very good hands in the theatre". A popular myth, propagated principally by a widely discredited documentary film called Hidden Heart and an erroneous newspaper article , maintains incorrectly that Naki was present during the Washkansky transplant.

Q: Tell me about the historical context of Christiaan Barnard.
A: Barnard had experimentally transplanted forty-eight hearts into dogs, which was about a fifth the number that Adrian Kantrowitz had performed at Maimonides Medical Center in New York

Q: Were the transplants mostly successful?
A: Barnard had no dogs which had survived longer than ten days, unlike Kantrowitz and Shumway who had had dogs survive for more than a year.

Q: Were these controversial?
A: unknown
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
On 23 January 1964, James Hardy at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, performed the world's first heart transplant and world's first cardiac xenotransplant
On 23 January 1964, James Hardy at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, performed the world's first heart transplant and world's first cardiac xenotransplant