Russell M. Nelson

He had two sisters, Marjory E. (1920–2016) and Enid (1926–2019), and a brother, Robert H. (1931–2014).

Nelson's father was a reporter for the Deseret News and later became general manager of Gillham Advertising, Utah's earliest advertising agency.

His parents were not active in the Latter-day Saint faith while he was a youth, but they did send him to Sunday School, and he was baptized a member of the LDS Church at age 16.

Nelson studied at LDS Business College in his mid-teens (concurrently with high school enrollment) and worked as an assistant secretary at a bank.

He graduated from high school at age 16 and enrolled at the University of Utah, where he was a member of the Beta Epsilon chapter of Sigma Chi and Owl and Key.

Russell Marion Nelson Sr. (born September 9, 1924) is an American religious leader and retired surgeon who is the 17th and current president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

Nelson was born on September 9, 1924, in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Floss Edna (née Anderson; 1893–1983) and Marion Clavar Nelson (1897–1990).

He earned a bachelor of arts in basic biological sciences with high honors in 1945, and a doctor of medicine degree in 1947, at age 22.

He graduated in 1945 with a Bachelor of Arts and Phi Beta Kappa membership.

He then attended the University of Utah School of Medicine, graduating with a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1947 ranked first in his class.

Nelson began his first year of medical school while still an undergraduate, and he completed the four-year M.D. program in only three years.

After medical school, Nelson went to the University of Minnesota for his medical residency.

He then did his medical residency and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, where he was a member of the research team developing the heart-lung machine that in 1951 supported the first human open-heart surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass.

After further surgical training and a two-year stint in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War, Nelson returned to Salt Lake City and accepted a professorship at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

He spent the next 29 years working in the field of cardiothoracic surgery.

Nelson became a noted heart surgeon and served as president of the Society for Vascular Surgery and the Utah Medical Association.

While at Minnesota, he was a member of surgeon Clarence Dennis's pioneering research team developing the heart-lung machine that in April 1951 supported the first human open-heart surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass.

Nelson received a Ph.D. from Minnesota in 1954 for his research contributions.

Nelson served a two-year term of duty in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War, and was stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. While on duty, he was assigned to a research group formed by the commandant of the graduate school at Walter Reed, Col. William S. Stone and led by Fiorindo A. Simeone, a professor of surgery at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who had been a clinical investigator in the Mediterranean Theater during World War II.

This team was focused on ways to improve the treatment of wounded and was sent to all five MASH units active in Korea along with two major evacuation hospitals, several field station hospitals, a prisoner of war camp and larger evacuation hospitals in Japan, Hawaii, and the mainland United States in order to implement such improvements.

At one point, the team came close enough to the front that they received fire from enemy artillery positions, which missed them.

After 20 months in service, he left active duty at the rank of captain.

Following his military service, he did a year of work and surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 1955, Nelson returned to Salt Lake City and accepted a faculty position at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

There he built his own heart-lung bypass machine and employed it to support the first open-heart surgery in the United States west of the Mississippi River.

That operation was performed at the Salt Lake General Hospital (SLGH, now University of Utah Hospital) on an adult with an atrial septal defect.

Nelson was also the director of the University of Utah thoracic surgery residency program.

In March 1956, he performed the first successful pediatric cardiac operation at the SLGH, a total repair of tetralogy of Fallot in a four-year-old girl.

He was at the forefront of surgeons focusing attention on coronary artery disease, and contributed to the advance of valvular surgery as well.

In 1960, he performed one of the first-ever repairs of tricuspid valve regurgitation.

His patient was a Latter-day Saint stake patriarch.

He also provided the first surgical intervention for tricuspid regurgitation, a disorder that allows blood to flow backward into the right upper heart chamber.

In an indication of his surgical skill, a 1968 case series of his aortic valve replacements demonstrated an exceptionally low peri-operative mortality.

Later, he performed the same operation on future LDS Church president Spencer W. Kimball, replacing his damaged aortic valve.

Nelson served in a variety of lay LDS Church leadership positions during his surgical career, beginning locally in Salt Lake City and then as the LDS Church's Sunday School General President from 1971 to 1979.

In 1984, Nelson and the American jurist Dallin H. Oaks were selected to fill two vacancies in the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

LDS apostles serve full-time for life, and so Nelson retired from all of his prior professional positions.

Nelson was a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for nearly 34 years, and was the quorum president from 2015 to 2018.

As church president, Nelson is recognized by the church as a prophet, seer, and revelator.

A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, Nelson attended the University of Utah for his undergraduate and medical school education.