Samuel L. Kountz
Samuel Lee Kountz first became interested in medicine at the age of eight, when he went with an injured friend to a local hospital for emergency treatment. He says he was so moved by the way the doctors' helped his friend, that he decided from that moment to become a doctor. During his senior year of high school, Kountz had met Senator J. William Fulbright, who had once been president of the University of Arkansas. The senator was so impressed by Kountz's energy and enthusiasm, that he urged him to consider the medical school at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Kountz applied but was turned down. He spent the next two years finishing up his graduate work in chemistry at the university's Fayetteville campus. He did so well that he was awarded a full medical scholarship, and in 1954 became the first black student to be admitted to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.Kountz completed a master's degree in chemistry in 1956; two years later he received his M.D. He spent the next year as an intern with the Stanford Service of San Francisco General Hospital. In 1959, he began his surgical training at the Stanford University School of Medicine. It was at Stanford that he studied in organ transplants, and decided to make transplant surgery his life's work. In 1976 Kountz  performed a kidney transplant on live television, The Today Show and inspired some 20,000 viewers to offer their kidneys to patients who needed them. In 1972 Kountz had been appointed Professor of Surgery and Chairman of the Department at the State University of New York's Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. He also served as Surgeon-in-Chief of Kings County Hospital. The University of Arkansas awarded him the honorary Juris Doctor in 1973. Doctor Kountz also developed the largest kidney transplant research and training program in the country at the University of California, San Francisco.