Transplant surgeon Robert Montgomery ’82 is compelled by a love of medicine and a love of family.  His numerous titles attest to his breadth of achievement: chief of transplantation, director of the Incompatible Kidney Transplant Program, director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center, and associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital.  He is president and medical advisor of the Montgomery Heart Foundation for Cardiomyopathy, established by his family in memory of his brother Richard '74, who died from the devastating disease of the heart muscle that can be genetic.  The foundation supports genetic research to improve survival rates and find a cure.

After a distinguished tenure at St. Lawrence, during which he majored in biology and won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to do medical research in Africa in the year following graduation, Phi Beta Kappa, he earned his medical degree at the University of Rochester and his doctoral degree at Oxford, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He has been affiliated with Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine in numerous capacities of increasing responsibility, and respect, since 1987.

The primary focus of his research in transplant biology is the development of innovative techniques to expand the live donor pool.  He has developed new and safer techniques, and traveled the world to help train surgeons in their use.  He is considered a world expert on kidney transplantation for highly sensitized and blood-type-incompatible patients.

For his creative and compassionate merging of the letter and the spirit of science in the quest to improve human health, St. Lawrence awarded Bob an honorary degree at Commencement 2007.