The pioneer of heart transplant surgery, Christiaan Barnard, has died suddenly after suffering a suspected asthma attack during a holiday in Cyprus.

The surgeon, who became an overnight celebrity 34 years ago after successfully performing the first heart transplant, was found collapsed in his room at the Coral Bay Hotel in Paphos yesterday morning.

Efforts to revive him at the scene failed and he was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival, the Cypriot health minister, Frixos Savvides, confirmed.

His friend and colleague Jonathan Savitt said he believed the professor, 78, who had suffered from chronic asthma in his later years, experienced a severe attack after his morning swim and failed to find his inhaler in time.

"He always carried it with him but on this occasion it seems that he did not have it to hand." A post mortem examination is expected to confirm the cause of death later today.

Prof Barnard's famous operation on 53-year-old dentist Louis Washkansky at Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town on December 3, 1967 changed the landscape of heart surgery.

His patient only lived for 18 days before his body rejected the new heart, but the procedure proved to the world that heart transplants were possible, opening the way for improvements and further research. There are now more than 400 such operations carried out in Britain every year.

Forced to retire from surgery in 1987 due to severe rheumatoid arthritis in his hands, he remained an influential figure in the world of medicine, travelling widely to deliver lectures.

Two years ago he set up an international foundation to help sick children and was taking a short break before a fundraising tour of the US when he died.

Mr Savitt, managing director of Ozonex Ltd which represents the Christiaan Barnard Foundation, described the death as "a colossal and tragic loss".

He added: "He was a colourful man in every sense of the word. He was a great raconteur and he led a very full life. There are tens of thousands of people who owe their lives to him because of his pioneering work."

Prof Barnard, who had recently left his native South Africa for a life in Vienna, struggled in the face of adversity during his early career.

Sir Roy Calne, emeritus professor of surgery at Cambridge, who performed the first liver transplant in Britain in 1968, said of his colleague: "We were trying to do new operations at the same time. He was a very charismatic man, always smiling, even when he was being attacked by lots of critics. I considered him very brave for doing what he did. Some people thought that he was crazy and opportunistic.

"There is always prejudice when there is something groundbreaking. The heart is such an emotionally evocative organ, that there was a great amount of opposition to what he wanted to do, but he stood up to them all very effectively."

John Wallwork, the head heart surgeon at Papworth hospital, Cambridge, said: "He had the courage to fail. He had great charisma."

Despite the trappings of fame, Prof Barnard, who was married three times and leaves six children, was always pulled back to his South African roots.

He was a vehement critic of apartheid as well as opponents of apartheid for not recognising the good in his country. In a recent interview he said the person he most admired was Nelson Mandela.

Expressing "deep shock" at the news of his death yesterday, the former South African president said: "He was one of our main achievers, a pioneer in heart transplant and he also has done very well in expressing his opinion on apartheid."