Dr. Samuel Lee Kountz Jr., was born on October 20, 1930 in Lexa, Arkansas, a small town with an inadequate school system in one of the most impoverished regions of the state. He attended a one-room school in Lexa until the age of fourteen, at which point he transferred to a Baptist boarding school in the same town. He later graduated from Morris Booker College High School in Dermott, AK. Kountz applied to Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (AM&N) in 1948, but he failed the entrance examination. Undaunted, he applied directly to Lawrence A. Davis Sr., president of Arkansas AM&N. Davis was so impressed by Kountz’s ambition, and his determination to become a physician that he admitted him despite his scores.
He graduated in 1952 third in his class. During Kountz’s senior year, he conducted a tour of the campus for Senator J. William Fulbright, who encouraged him in his goal of becoming a physician. Impressed by Kountz's energy and enthusiasm, Fulbright asked him what he planned to do following graduation. Kountz told him that he hoped to attend a Black medical school, where he could realize his lifelong dream of becoming a surgeon. While the Little Rock campus rejected him, Kountz spent the next two years completing graduate work in chemistry at the university's Fayetteville campus.
On the basis of his accomplishments, he was awarded a full medical scholarship to the University of Arkansas for Medical Science in 1954. He became the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences first Black student in 1954. Kountz completed a master's degree in biochemistry from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville in 1956. He then graduated and received his Medical Degree in 1958 from the University of Arkansas Medical School, becoming the first African American to study there. An internship at the prestigious Stanford Service, a San Francisco hospital, followed during the next two years. He received and completed surgical training at Stanford Medical Center in 1965.
Two significant experiences during these years shaped Kountz’s future. The first was studying with Roy Cohn, one of the world’s pioneers in organ transplantation. Next, was receiving the Giannini Fellowship in surgery that supported his postdoctoral training at the San Francisco County Hospital and his postgraduate medical studies at Hammersmith Hospital in London, England. The apex of his achievement as a resident physician at Stanford was performing, in 1961, the first kidney transplant between a recipient and a donor who were not identical twins. This transplant, between a mother and a daughter, made kidney transplants possible for thousands of ailing patients.
In the following eight years, 5,000 kidney transplants were performed. This single achievement guaranteed his status as a pioneer in surgery. The American College of Cardiology honored him in 1964 with an Outstanding Investigator Award. n 1965, he performed the first renal transplant in Egypt as a visiting Fulbright professor in the United Arab Republic. After returning from overseas, Kountz was made assistant professor of surgery at Stanford University in 1966, becoming an associate professor in 1967. At the University of California at San Francisco in 1967, Kountz and colleague Folker Belzer produced a machine capable of preserving donated human kidneys for more than two days while they were delivered to a suitable recipient.
Dr. Kountz was also director of the transplant service of the University of California until 1972. It was here that Kountz made the breakthrough observation that high doses of a steroid hormone, methylprednisolone, arrested the rejection of transplanted kidneys, thus allowing them to appropriately administer anti-rejection drugs. This discovery led directly to the current drug regimens that make organ transplants using donations from unrelated donors routine. The years between 1967 and 1972 were his most productive. The above discovery and his advocacy of the implantation of a second kidney at the earliest signs of rejection were his two greatest contributions to the field.
Dr. Kountz was recruited to be the chief of kidney transplant service at the University of California, San Francisco. The combination of an academic and a clinical appointment clearly showed the pathway he intended to follow. After five years there, Kountz moved to the East Coast, becoming professor of surgery and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. He told friends that he wanted to improve healthcare for the Black community there. That same year, 1972, Kountz became chief of surgery at New York City’s Kings County Hospital Medical Center.
In 1974, Kountz was elected president of the Society of University Surgeons as an expression of respect for his clinical and research achievements. As part of his campaign to increase awareness of the need for living donors in renal transplantation, Kountz performed a live kidney transplant on NBC’s Today show, resulting in 20,000 persons responding with offers to donate kidneys. In addition, his groundbreaking research in the area of tissue typing helped improve the results of kidney transplantation and led to the increased use of kidneys from unrelated donors. Kountz wrote seventy-six professional papers and other scholarly articles.
The University of Arkansas awarded him an honorary JD degree as a distinguished alumnus, honoring his pioneering achievements in the field of kidney transplant research in 1974. In April 1985, the First International Symposium on Renal Failure and Transplantation in Blacks was held and dedicated to his memory. As a member of organizations such as Alpha Omega Alpha, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Society of Transplant Surgeons, elected to many editorial boards and many more affiliations, Kountz was valued as a family man and figurehead who inspired many and enhanced the medical field with his professional manner, intellect and charisma.
In July 1980 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) presented an Afro- Academic, Technological, and Scientific Olympics program award, which is a special high school science award for African American students, in his honor. Five years later the World's First International Symposium on Renal Failure and Transplantation in Blacks was dedicated to his memory. At the time of his death in December 1981, he had personally perform around 500 kidney transplants throughout his career, believed to be the most of any physician at that time.