Editor's note: This article was originally published on LDSLiving.com in 2019 and has been updated with new facts. The majority of these facts are sourced from Russell M. Nelson: Father, Surgeon, Apostle by Spencer J. Condie and Insights from a Prophet’s Life: Russell M. Nelson by Sheri Dew.
As we celebrate the 100th birthday of our beloved prophet this month, here are 100 facts about President Russell M. Nelson from the beginning of his life to today.
Growing Up
1. He was 9 pounds and 11 ounces when he was born (Condie 23).
2. His family was not active in the Church while he was growing up (Dew 3).
3. Growing up, he didn’t like liver and would hide it in his pockets and throw it into a vacant lot on his way to school (Condie 31).
4. He learned about the Church by taking a streetcar to Deseret Book to read about it (Dew 4).
5. As a young boy, he once broke every bottle of his parent’s alcohol and poured it down the drain in the basement floor (Dew 5).
6. He has two sisters and a brother (Dew 3).
7. He played the bugle in his elementary school bugle corps (Condie 31).
8. He was student body vice president in his junior high school (Condie 38).
9. As a child, he received a black Iver Johnson bicycle for Christmas one year during the Great Depression, which his grandchildren used to ride at their Nelson grandparents’ home in Midway (Condie 29).
10. He was baptized when he was 16 (Dew 6).
Education
11. He skipped the fifth grade (Dew 13).
12. He worked on his bachelor’s and master’s degrees simultaneously and graduated with both in 1947 at only 22 years old (Dew 17).
13. It took 12 ½ years from the time he received his doctoral degree to the time he started being paid for his services as a surgeon (Dew 25).
14. He worked as an assistant resident in surgery at Harvard (Dew 44).
15. He was only paid $15 a month as a medical intern (Dew 29).
Dating and Marriage
16. He met his first wife, Dantzel White, during a play he was recruited to act in at the University of Utah (Dew 18).
17. He proposed to Dantzel in a pea patch in the White family’s backyard, and they were married in the Salt Lake Temple (Condie 46).
18. He and Dantzel learned Mandarin after President Kimball talked about preparing to teach the gospel to the Chinese people (Dew 132).
19. Dantzel passed away unexpectedly on February 12, 2005, after almost 60 years of marriage (Dew 226).
20. He married Wendy Watson on April 6, 2006 (Dew 242).
21. He and Wendy were robbed at gunpoint while visiting Church leaders in Mozambique. A gun pointed at President Nelson’s head misfired, and everyone’s life was spared (Dew 255).
Medical Career
22. He performed surgeries on multiple dogs while helping develop a heart-lung machine (Dew 32–34).
23. He helped train at least 75 residents in open-heart surgery from around the world (Dew 58).
24. He has written more than 70 peer-reviewed papers for medical publications (Dew 60).
25. He operated on nearly 7,000 people during his career as a surgeon (Dew 60).
26. He enlisted in the United States Army during the Korean War and served in the Army Medical Corps (Dew 37–38).
27. He was a captain while in the Army (Dew 44).
28. He performed the first open-heart surgery in Utah on November 9, 1955, at age 31 (Dew 57).
29. He once almost got botulism as an intern when a surgeon lost his temper and jabbed an infected scalpel through Dr. Nelson’s forearm (Dew 64).
30. While performing a life-saving surgery on a mother carrying twins, he had to use his finger to close her pulmonary artery while completing the surgery (Dew 139).
31. He was a surgeon for 35 years (Dew 165).
32. In 2023, he donated all of his medical journals (records of over 7,000 operations performed over 31 years) to the University of Utah’s School of Medicine (Deseret News).
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Work in China
33. He was a visiting professor of surgery in China for several years (Dew 135).
34. He performed his final open-heart surgery while he was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve on a famous Chinese opera singer (Dew 169).
35. He was given the title “Old Friend of China” by a delegation in Jinan—the highest compliment you can receive in China (Dew 302–303).
36. He has been awarded honorary professorships from three universities in the People’s Republic of China (Church Newsroom).
Guided by Inspiration
37. He received revelation on how to fix a valve in the heart of a stake patriarch who had come to him for help (Dew 68–71).
38. He witnessed miracles as he performed a successful, complex operation on Elder Spencer W. Kimball, who would one day become the President of the Church (Dew 104–106).
39. He was in the operating room during the heart surgeries of four fellow Church leaders: President M. Russell Ballard, President Howard W. Hunter, Elder Robert D. Hales, and Elder David B. Haight (Dew 318).
40. He saved Elder Paul H. Dunn’s life by following a prompting to leave a vacation early. President Nelson arrived home in time to perform heart surgery on Elder Dunn, who had a heart attack as the surgery began but was able to be stabilized (Dew 115–116).
41. He turned down a lucrative and prestigious career offer from the University of Chicago after seeking the advice of President David O. McKay, who told President Nelson that it didn’t feel right (Dew 364).
Life as a Father
42. His 10th child and only son was born two months after his first grandson (Dew 79–80).
43. He once nearly drowned on a family rafting trip down the Colorado River (Dew 110–111).
44. He used to take his daughters with him when traveling to medical conventions and other professional assignments (Dew 126).
45. He would curl his daughters’ hair and get them ready for church while Dantzel sang in the Tabernacle Choir (Dew 126).
46. He wrote The Gateway We Call Death after his daughter (a wife and mother of five) died of cancer (Dew 216–217).
47. He sends a personalized card to all of his family members for birthdays and wedding anniversaries (Dew 252).
48. He attends the blessings, baptisms, ordinations, sealings, and endowments of all of his family members (Dew 393).
Personal Hobbies and Habits
49. He has perfect pitch and used to be asked to give the pitch for his University of Utah a cappella choir (Condie 40).
50. He sings baritone (Dew 18).
51. He played the organ for the Brethren during their Thursday morning meetings in the temple for nearly 34 years (Dew 375).
52. He was a Temple Square missionary for nearly 10 years (Dew 86).
53. He would use medical terms to refer to everyday objects (his children thought a traffic jam was called a thrombosis!) (Dew 126).
54. He uses Exodus 31:13 as his guideline for Sabbath observance (Dew 94).
55. He is never late. His daughter Sylvia remembers, “He’d be out in the car waiting for us to go to church. If we weren’t there when he had to go, we’d have to walk. We only needed to learn that lesson one time” (Dew 123).
56. He is a master of self-discipline, according to his colleagues. For example, a former student of Dr. Nelson described Dr. Nelson’s operating room as “peaceful, calm, and dignified. Residents were treated with deep respect,” and there was deliberate concentration and no sense of drama (Dew 65–66).
57. He has studied at least 12 languages: French, Latin, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Czech, and Romanian (Dew 219–220).
58. He is a good listener. President Jeffrey R. Holland once shared that during a discussion among the Quorum of the Twelve, he asked President Nelson for his thoughts. President Nelson responded that “he had been listening to the discussion and had feelings on the matter but that he wanted to think more about it before he offered his opinion. He wanted to think and listen to the Lord” (Dew 279–280).
59. He has great respect for women. In fact, President Nelson’s son-in-law David Webster shared that President Nelson would often say that he chose medicine because he couldn’t choose to be a mother. Webster says, “He believed that, and he lived that way. His respect for women has shone through everything he’s done” (Dew 293).
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60. He has a gift for and a great love of revelation. When he proposed to Wendy Watson Nelson, he told her, “There are plenty of things I do not know about you, but I do know revelation” (Dew 241).
61. He likes to garden and go fishing (Church News).
62. He was one of the first General Authorities to get a computer and adopt new technologies (Dew 373–374).
63. He is a talented writer and editor. President Dallin H. Oaks, whose profession required him to be careful with words, has said, “I have found that as I give my talks in draft form to various members of the Quorum of the Twelve, there is no one who has a greater capacity to improve my talks than Russell M. Nelson” (Dew 375).
64. He collects stamps and coins (Dew 376–377).
65. He loves putting together jigsaw puzzles (Dew 376).
66. He enjoys finding unusual figurines of doctors in other countries (Dew 376).
67. He developed an interest in photography while in high school and even wrote a research paper on the chemistry of photography for his high school chemistry class (Condie 39).
68. He loves the outdoors (Dew 345).
69. He is listed in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, and Who’s Who in Religion (Church Newsroom).
70. He has received three honorary degrees: doctor of science from Brigham Young University, doctor of medical science from Utah State University, and doctor of humane letters from Snow College (Church Newsroom).
71. He has kept meticulous notes on different subjects from medicine to religion throughout his life, including the scores of the college basketball games he attended (Condie 193).
Church Service
72. He did not serve a full-time mission due to the outbreak of war (Ensign).
73. He has met all but six prophets of this dispensation (Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F. Smith) (Deseret News).
74. He was called as the Bonneville stake president in August 1945 (Dew 86).
75. He was called as the Sunday School General President in June 1971 and served for eight years (Dew 98–99).
76. While he was the Sunday School General President, he ordained his father as an elder of the Melchizedek Priesthood (Dew 7).
77. He was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in April 1984 (Dew 158–159).
78. He was one of the first Apostles in 21 years to be called to the Quorum of the Twelve without first acting as a General Authority (Condie 187–188).
79. He was instrumental in helping the Church gain recognition in Russia (Dew 174–182).
80. He shared a gospel message with Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev (Dew 182).
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81. He represented the Church in front of the IRS to determine if money spent to sustain missionaries could be eligible for a tax exemption (Dew 202–204).
82. He was the first member of the Quorum of the Twelve to visit Kazakhstan, which he did in 2003 (Church News).
83. He became President of the Quorum of the Twelve in 2015 (Dew 277).
84. His signature is on “The Living Christ” and he had a role in the creation of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” (Dew 210–212; 224). In April 2020, he presented the Restoration Proclamation in honor of the 200th anniversary of Joseph Smith's First Vision.
85. During his years as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, he visited 134 countries and dedicated or participated in the dedication of 31 of those countries (Church News).
A Prophet of God
86. He was the chairman of the Missionary Executive Council and was the one who initially proposed the missionary service age be lowered to 18 for young men (Dew 265–269).
87. He was ordained as the prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in January 2018, after the passing of President Thomas S. Monson (Dew 326).
88. After becoming the prophet, he was the first to have Wi-Fi and a computer installed in the President’s Office (Dew 374).
89. Unlike the two prophets before him, President Nelson never served in the First Presidency (Dew 330).
90. He went skiing as often as he could in the winter, up until he became the President of the Church (Dew 345).
91. In a 2018 interview, President Oaks said President Nelson always took the stairs instead of the elevator when leaving the temple (Dew 340).
92. In September 2018, President Nelson gave what is believed to be the first address by a President of the Church in a language other than his native tongue—in Spanish (Dew 351–352).
93. He went on a historic world tour a few months after being ordained as the prophet to meet with and talk to Saints in many places, including London, Jerusalem, Nairobi, Harare, Bengaluru, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Hawaii, and Africa (Dew 379).
94. In 2018, he spoke to a crowd of over 49,000 people at a baseball stadium in Seattle (Dew 401).
95. In his years as the prophet, there have been over 100 announcements and major changes, including the introduction of ministering, Come, Follow Me, the combining of the elders quorum, the shortening of Sunday meetings, a re-emphasis on the entire name of the Church, and temple-related changes (Church News).
96. He was the first Latter-day Saint prophet to meet with a pope (Church Newsroom).
97. As of September 2024, President Nelson has announced 168 new temples to be built—more than any other prophet (Church News).
98. In April 2022, President Nelson became the oldest president of the Church, passing President Gordon B. Hinckley who died at the age of 97 (Church Newsroom).
99. In August 2022, President Nelson became the Church’s longest-living latter-day Apostle (Church News).
100. President Nelson is the first prophet to have chapters from his Teachings of Presidents of the Church manual published before his death (Church News, August 2024).
