Surgeon Earns Spot in 100 Most Influential People of 2025

More than 2 decades ago,TIME magazine launched an annual list of the most influential people to highlight individuals who are transforming the world.

The 2025 list includes transplant pioneer and humanitarian Robert A. Montgomery, MD, DPhil, FACS, who chairs the Department of Surgery at NYU Langone Health and is the H. Leon Pachter, MD Professor of Surgery in the Department of Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, all in New York, New York.

Over his career, Dr. Montgomery has helped develop numerous improvements to transplantation, including laparoscopic live-donor nephrectomy, long-distance live-donor shipping of kidneys, and desensitization and paired-donation modalities, which his team then used to transplant more than 700 patients. He also advanced xenotransplantation by performing the first successful genetically modified porcine-to-human kidney transplantation in 2021.

As a long-time advocate for the use of hepatitis C-positive organs to increase the organs eligible for transplant, he accepted a hepatitis C-positive heart himself in 2018.

Among his numerous prestigious awards are the 2024 ACS Jacobson Innovation Award and the Order of Merit Medal from Ukraine for taking essential supplies and performing transplants in that war-torn area.