Editor’s note: After a lifetime of dedicated service, President Russell M. Nelson died on Sept. 27, 2025, at age 101. This article is part of a series exploring different facets of President Nelson’s exemplary, faith-filled life.
During his time in medical school, President Russell M. Nelson was taught that touching a human heart would cause it to stop beating (“President Russell M. Nelson: Guided, Prepared, Committed”).
But during his postdoctoral training at the University of Minnesota, he and other researchers successfully used a heart-lung machine on a dog, later extending the technique to humans.
The inspiration for the technique came to Dr. Nelson while he was studying Doctrine and Covenants 88. Verse 38 states, “And unto every kingdom is given a law; and unto every law there are certain bounds also and conditions.”
He reasoned that if he worked and studied, his team could learn what laws govern the beating heart.
“It was through the understanding of the scriptures and ‘likening’ them to this area of interest that the great field of heart surgery as we know it today was facilitated for me,” he said during a 1984 speech at Brigham Young University (“Begin With the End in Mind”).
This was one of the many ways President Nelson’s faith influenced his extensive and remarkable medical career.
President Nelson became a doctor at age 22, when he graduated from the University of Utah with high honors (“Russell M. Nelson: Guided, Prepared, Committed”).
After his postdoctoral training, he was summoned to serve during the Korean War because the military desperately needed doctors. Due to his surgical training, he was sent to Washington, D.C., where he formed the surgical research unit at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
In 1953, after fulfilling his military obligations, he spent a year on the Harvard Service at Massachusetts General Hospital and then finished a doctorate degree at the University of Minnesota in 1954.
The following year, he became a research professor of surgery at the University of Utah, where he built a heart-lung machine that he used to perform the first open-heart surgery in the state.
He also lectured, contributed numerous chapters to medical textbooks and wrote more than 70 peer-reviewed papers. Prior to being called as an Apostle, he performed nearly 7,000 operations.
Throughout his many successes, President Nelson never stopped following the prophet.
For instance, in 1965, he was offered a professorship of surgery and chairmanship of the Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Chicago. The offer included four years of college for all of his children to the schools of their choice.
But as President Nelson wrote in his autobiography, he first sought counsel from President David O. McKay. The Prophet prayed, and the answer was, “No, Brother Nelson, your place is here in Salt Lake City” (see President David O. McKay in “From Heart to Heart,” by Russell Marion Nelson, page 150).
He followed the Prophet’s counsel. In years to come, he performed open-heart surgery on many patients, including President Spencer W. Kimball, Elder Richard L. Evans and President Boyd K. Packer (“President Russell M. Nelson: Guided, Prepared, Committed”).
Throughout his career, President Nelson used his gift for languages to teach medical procedures all over the world, perhaps most notably in China.
His connection to the country started after a 1979 meeting in which President Kimball advised the congregation to learn Chinese. President Nelson and his late wife, Sister Dantzel Nelson, immediately began studying Mandarin, and the next year he was invited to China as a visiting professor to teach open-heart surgery.
Later, in 1985, Elder Nelson received an urgent request to perform open-heart surgery on a famous Chinese opera star, regarded as the national hero of the country.
By that time an Apostle, President Nelson discussed the matter with his quorum president and with the First Presidency. They felt he should make the trip “as a favor to the people of China,” Elder Nelson wrote in an October 2016 Liahona article.
The operation — the last that Elder Nelson ever performed — was a success. Years later, in October 2019, President Nelson and his wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, were invited back to Shandong University School of Medicine in Jinan.
“We were amazed when I was warmly welcomed as ‘an old friend’ of China and was reunited with surgeons I had taught 35 years earlier,” President Nelson wrote. “All of these amazing experiences were enabled for one reason: I heeded the counsel of a Prophet to study Mandarin!”
