Lifetime Achievement Award

Meet our 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient

Discover the incredible story of Professor Magdi Yacoub, the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Professor Magdi Yacoub

Sir Magdi Yacoub is a talented surgeon, trailblazing researcher, and tireless charity campaigner who has pioneered scientific innovation and saved lives over 7 decades. 

As a child, Sir Magdi watched his father struggle with the death of his sister at 22 from heart valve disease. It inspired him to devote his life to changing the face of cardiovascular medicine for thousands of patients.

“My dad fell to pieces when he lost his sister whom he loved so much,” he explains. “He told me that there were surgeons in the UK and US starting to open the heart valve and that this disaster could have been prevented. From then, I just followed my dream.” 

Born in Egypt, Sir Magdi graduated from Cairo University Medical School in 1957. His incredible impact in the field of cardiovascular medicine spans across borders; Sir Magdi has worked and developed cardiac services in many countries including, the US, Egypt, Nigeria, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda, alongside the UK. He has worked tirelessly to tackle inequalities in the delivery of global cardiac healthcare. 

Sir Magdi served as the first BHF Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery for more than 20 years and established the largest heart and lung transplantation programme in the world at Harefield Hospital.

His incredible expertise and creativity have led to many medical milestones. He invented and improved several important heart surgeries, including during the 1970s when he pioneered the arterial switch procedure, used to correct transposition of the great arteries; a congenital heart defect. He operated on Europe’s longest-surviving heart transplant patient, performed the UK’s first combined heart and lung transplant and carried out the UK’s first ‘piggyback transplant’ - where a donor heart is grafted onto the patient’s own failing heart, allowing it the chance to recover.  

Of his pioneering surgeries, he reflects: “I was always asking myself what could I do to help a patient who had no other chance of being cured. I would think and think about it… Then when the time came to perform the surgery I knew precisely what I was going to do and more often than not, it did work. There is nothing more exciting than seeing a patient who is about to die or in dire trouble coming to life again. 

“When transplantation started, we were greeted with a lot of scepticism … but now I’m so delighted when a patient comes to see me 36 years after transplantation and brings his children and grandchildren.” 

On his long-time association with BHF, Sir Magdi says: “Being a BHF Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery meant a lot to me because I’ve always admired the research BHF funds. I’m proud to have served the charity for so long. Supporting BHF-funded research is an investment in humanity.”