Editing Christiaan Barnard (section)

==Early life==
Barnard was born on November 8, 1922 and grew up in [[Beaufort West]], [[Cape Province]], Union of South Africa.<ref name="ctsnet">{{cite web |title=Christiaan N. Barnard |url=http://www.ctsnet.org/doc/6272 |website=CTSNet |access-date=14 January 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061217194135/http://www.ctsnet.org/doc/6272 |archive-date=17 December 2006}}</ref> His father, Adam Barnard, was a minister in the [[Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa|Dutch Reformed Church]].<ref name="mcrae2006" /> One of his four brothers, Abraham, was a "blue baby" who died of a heart problem at the age of three (Barnard would later guess that it was [[tetralogy of Fallot]]). The family also experienced the loss of a daughter who was stillborn and who had been the fraternal twin of Barnard's older brother Johannes, who was twelve years older than Christiaan.<ref>{{Cite book |last=McRae |first=Donald |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2Fv9dRT9TC4C&dq=%22Chris+and+Marius+often+felt+that+she+was+grieving+over+the+loss+of+her+only+daughter%22&pg=PT44 |title=Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart |date=7 August 2007 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-1-4406-2887-0 |page=46 |authorlink=Donald McRae (author)}}</ref> Barnard matriculated from the Beaufort West High School in 1940, and went to study medicine at the [[University of Cape Town]] Medical School, where he obtained his [[MBChB|MB ChB]] in 1945.

His father served as a missionary to mixed-race people. His mother, the former Maria Elisabeth de Swart, instilled in the surviving brothers the belief that they could do anything they set their minds to.<ref name=New-York-Times-2001-obituary-Christiaan-Barnard/>