Russell Marion Nelson Sr. (born September 9, 1924) is an American religious leader and retired surgeon who is the 17th and current president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Nelson was a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for nearly 34 years, and was the quorum president from 2015 to 2018. As church president, Nelson is recognized by the church as a prophet, seer, and revelator. A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, Nelson attended the University of Utah for his undergraduate and medical school education. He then did his medical residency and earned a PhD at the University of Minnesota, where he was a member of the research team developing the heart-lung machine that in 1951 supported the first ever human open-heart surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass. After further surgical training and a two-year stint in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War, Nelson returned to Salt Lake City and accepted a professorship at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He spent the next 29 years working in the field of cardiothoracic surgery. Nelson became a noted heart surgeon and served as president of the Society for Vascular Surgery and the Utah Medical Association. Nelson served in a variety of lay LDS Church leadership positions during his surgical career, beginning locally in Salt Lake City and then as the LDS Church's Sunday School General President from 1971 to 1979. In 1984, Nelson and the American jurist Dallin H. Oaks were selected to fill two vacancies in the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. LDS apostles serve full-time for life, and so Nelson retired from all of his prior professional positions. Early life and education Russell M. Nelson was born on September 9, 1924, in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Floss Edna (née Anderson; 1893–1983) and Marion Clavar Nelson (1897–1990). He had two sisters, Marjory E. (1920–2016) and Enid (1926–2019), and a brother, Robert H. (1931–2014). Nelson's father was a reporter for the Deseret News and later became general manager of Gillham Advertising, Utah's earliest advertising agency. His parents were not active in the Latter-day Saint faith while he was a youth, but they did send him to Sunday School, and he was baptized a member of the LDS Church at age 16. Nelson studied at LDS Business College in his mid-teens (concurrently with high school enrollment) and