NICOSIA, Sept 2 (AFP) -
Christiaan Barnard, the pioneering South African surgeon who made medical history by performing the world's first heart transplant, died in Cyprus on Sunday at the age of 78.(Read photo caption below)

The colourful Barnard, who became a worldwide celebrity after the 1967 operation and had an outsized ego to match, died by his hotel pool in the coastal resort town of Paphos -- while reading one of his own books.

Hospital sources said the cause of death had not yet been determined, while medical sources confirmed that an autopsy on Monday would be attended by a visiting physician from Austria, where Barnard lived for a time.

"We are all very deeply saddened to hear of Dr Barnard's passing," Cypriot Health Minister Frixos Savvides told AFP.

Barnard, a regular holiday visitor to the Mediterranean island, was alone at the Coral Beach hotel and sunning himself by the pool when he lost consciousness on Sunday afternoon, a hotel manager said.

Another guest, a Cypriot doctor, tried unsuccessfully to revive him.

Doctor Neophytos Papageorgiou, a heart specialist, said he rushed to the pool after people started shouting that someone had fallen ill.

"When I reached the sun bed where he was, he was on his side and he wasn't breathing. I tried to revive him with other members of staff but failed," Papageorgiou told reporters.

Barnard was pronounced dead at 1:15 pm (1015 GMT), hospital officials said.

"He was very popular with the staff and a very decent man," the Coral Beach manager said, adding that Barnard had not complained to staff in recent days about his health. He was due to go home next Sunday.

Hotel sources confirmed that Barnard, who boasted of sexual conquests including actress Gina Lollobrigida in his autobiography and fathered six children with three wives, was staying alone during his holiday.

Last year he divorced his last wife, former model Karin who was only two years old when he performed the groundbreaking 1967 transplant.

Barnard shot to overnight fame on December 3, 1967, when he and a team of doctors performed the first human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town.

The heart of Denise Darvall, 25, who was killed in a car accident, was transplanted to 52-year-old grocer Louis Washkansky.

Although Washkansky died 18 days later, the operation gave new hope to heart patients, while Barnard's winning smile and handsome looks graced magazine covers around the world.

"On Saturday," he said in a 1997 interview, "I was a surgeon in South Africa. On Monday I was world renowned." He once said the operation made him as well-known as another famous South African, former president Nelson Mandela.

Mandela himself and other luminaries expressed sorrow at Barnard's passing.

"His death is a great loss to the country after all the contributions he made. He was also very vocal against apartheid," Mandela told reporters at his Johannesburg home, where he was meeting Cuban President Fidel Castro.

"Doctor Barnard will remain the symbol of audacious modern medicine, able to surpass accepted ideas to bring solutions to victims of suffering and illness," French President Jacques Chirac said.

Sir Terence English, former president of Britain's Royal College of Surgeons, said Barnard's work had made him one of the world's most famous men.

"At one time, he was one of the two or three best known men in the world. You could go around and there would people who did not know John Kennedy but would know Chris Barnard

"Not everybody liked him and a lot of people were jealous of him but he was a very remarkable and outspoken man," he said.

In his lifetime, Barnard met the likes of the Pope and actress Sophia Loren, yet also treated hundreds of patients around the world free of charge.

He started an almost holy grail-like quest to stay young, especially after arthritis forced him to retire from surgery in 1983, carrying out a set of bizarre genetic experiments in an effort to keep his youthful gloss.

With the income from sales of a questionable anti-ageing cream, he bought a farm in South Africa and began writing books.

"I worry that I am starting to look old and walk old and appear old," he once said. "I like to stand in front of a mirror and be proud of what I see."
PHOTO CAPTION:
FILE--Dr. Christian Barnard smiels during a lecture in Rome in this Jan. 30, 1968 file photo. The South African heart transplant pioneer died in a resort in Paphos on the southwest coast of Cyprus on Sunday, Sept. 2, 2001. He was 78. (AP Photo/Mario Torrisi)
- Sep 02 12:25 PM ET