Dr Victor Chang AC

Readers note: This is an excerpt from the 200 Treasures exhibition catalogue, developed in 2017. This content was written as a brief biography on why this person was included in the exhibition.

Australia was stunned on 4 July 1991, when it was revealed that a man shot dead on a Sydney road was Dr Victor Chang.

Chang was a household name in Australia and known internationally for his pioneering work in cardiac and transplant surgery. At the time of his death, his cardiac unit at St Vincent’s Hospital had performed 266 heart transplants and 22 heart–lung transplants.

Victor Chang was born Chang Yam Him in 1936 in Shanghai. His early life was impacted by the great cataclysm of the Sino–Japanese War and then World War II, resulting in his family’s displacement from Hong Kong to Burma (present-day Myanmar) and back. After his mother’s death, Chang moved to Sydney in 1953 to complete his secondary schooling. He was a brilliant student and was accepted to study medicine at the University of Sydney in 1956; he graduated in 1962. He then worked at St Vincent’s Hospital where he became cardiothoracic surgical registrar in 1965.

Chang left Australia to expand his professional skills, taking up placements in the UK and, in 1970, the Mayo Clinic in the US, where he was chief resident. He rejoined St Vincent’s Hospital’s cardiothoracic surgical team on his return to Australia in 1972, and worked with pioneers in the field of transplant surgery.

In 1984, Chang established the National Heart Transplant Program at St Vincent’s. The program seized international attention in 1984 when Chang performed his fourth heart transplant on a 14-year-old patient, Fiona Coote, who successfully underwent repeat surgery in 1986. He has been memorialised in many ways, such as the naming of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute at St Vincent’s Hospital, but most significantly through patients such as Fiona Coote and the hundreds who followed her.