Best Surgeon General

William Macewen (1848-1924) was a Scottish surgeon associated with the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the University of Glasgow. Applying antiseptic methods and neurological localization, he performed early successful operations for intracranial tumors, abscesses, and traumatic lesions, helping establi...

Philippe Mouret (1938-2008) was a French surgeon associated with the early development of laparoscopic abdominal surgery. In Lyon in 1987, he removed a gallbladder using laparoscopic instruments rather than the large incision required by conventional open cholecystectomy. The operation helped demons...

George Washington Crile was an American surgeon and one of the founders of the Cleveland Clinic, established in 1921 as a group medical practice. He made influential contributions to the study and treatment of surgical shock, blood pressure, transfusion, and thyroid disease. Crile also developed the...

William Cheselden (1688-1752) was an English surgeon and anatomist whose work helped establish surgery as a systematic clinical discipline. He became particularly known for performing lateral lithotomy for bladder stones with unusual speed and comparatively low mortality for the period. His publicat...

C. Everett Koop was a renowned American pediatric surgeon instrumental in developing modern neonatal care. His pioneering work establishing the first neonatal intensive care unit at Philadelphia’s Children's Hospital significantly improved infant survival rates. Later, he served as the 13th Surgeon...

Owen H. Wangensteen was an American surgeon and longtime chair of surgery at the University of Minnesota. He developed the Wangensteen suction apparatus, which used gastrointestinal decompression to manage intestinal obstruction and reduced the immediate need for hazardous emergency operations. He a...

Alfred Cuschieri is a surgeon and academic associated with the University of Dundee who contributed to the development of minimally invasive surgery in Europe. His work helped establish laparoscopic procedures as subjects of systematic surgical research, training, and technical refinement rather tha...

James Syme was a nineteenth-century Scottish surgeon and an influential teacher at the University of Edinburgh. He described the ankle disarticulation now called the Syme amputation, which removes the foot while preserving the heel pad to create a weight-bearing stump. Syme was also the mentor and f...

Jonathan Rhoads was an American surgeon and medical researcher associated with the University of Pennsylvania. Working with Stanley Dudrick and colleagues, he helped develop total parenteral nutrition, a method of supplying essential nutrients directly through the bloodstream when the digestive trac...

Berkeley Moynihan, 1st Baron Moynihan, was a British abdominal surgeon whose career spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He became particularly associated with operations involving the stomach, duodenum, and biliary system, and wrote influential works on surgical diagnosis and...

Jacques Perissat was a French surgeon associated with the early development of minimally invasive abdominal surgery. In the late 1980s, he performed and demonstrated laparoscopic cholecystectomy, in which the gallbladder is removed through small incisions using a camera and specialized instruments....

Irving L. Lichtenstein was an American surgeon known for developing and promoting a tension-free approach to open inguinal hernia repair. The operation reinforces the weakened groin with a flat synthetic mesh instead of closing the defect by pulling tissues together under tension. Commonly called th...

Edward Earle Shouldice was a Canadian surgeon who developed a tissue-based operation for repairing inguinal hernias. The Shouldice repair reconstructs the posterior wall of the inguinal canal through overlapping layers of the patient's own tissue rather than routinely using prosthetic mesh. His meth...

George Crile Jr. was an American surgeon associated with the Cleveland Clinic and an influential critic of routinely using radical surgery for breast cancer. He argued that the extent of an operation should reflect the biology and spread of the disease rather than the assumption that wider removal w...

William P. Longmire Jr. was an American surgeon who became the founding chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles. His work included hepatobiliary surgery and methods of reconstructing damaged or obstructed bile ducts. His name is associated with the Longmire pr...

Eddie Joe Reddick was an American general surgeon associated with the early adoption of laparoscopic gallbladder removal in the United States. Working with Douglas Olsen in Tennessee, he performed laparoscopic cholecystectomy in the late 1980s and helped teach the technique to other surgeons as inte...

Isidor Schwaner Ravdin was an American surgeon and professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose career combined clinical surgery, research, teaching, and military service. During the Second World War he served as a senior surgical consultant to the United States Army and treated General George...

Sir Frederick Treves was a British surgeon known for his work in abdominal surgery and for two prominent associations in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. In 1902 he operated on King Edward VII for appendicitis shortly before the planned coronation, helping establish surgical treatment for the c...

Lloyd Nyhus was an American surgeon at the University of Illinois who developed the preperitoneal approach to inguinal hernia repair and co-authored landmark hernia surgery texts.

Joseph Bell was a Scottish surgeon and teacher at the University of Edinburgh who was noted for using detailed observation in clinical diagnosis. He taught students to infer a patient's occupation, habits, and background from physical appearance, speech, movement, and other small signs. Arthur Conan...

Hiram C. Polk Jr. was an American academic surgeon whose career was closely associated with the University of Louisville. His research included surgical infections, antibiotic use, inflammation, and the prevention of complications surrounding operations. As a department chair and surgical educator,...

Claude E. Welch was an American surgeon associated for much of his career with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He was known for clinical and educational work in abdominal surgery, including diseases of the colon and rectum. Through teaching, professional leadership, and su...

Henri Mondor was a French surgeon and medical writer who lived from 1885 to 1962. He described the condition now called Mondor disease, a superficial thrombophlebitis most characteristically affecting veins of the chest wall and presenting as a tender, cordlike structure beneath the skin. In additio...

Ian Aird was a British surgeon and medical author who lived from 1905 to 1962 and worked at institutions including Hammersmith Hospital in London. He is particularly associated with A Companion in Surgical Studies, a wide-ranging reference text written for postgraduate surgical training and professi...

Philip Sandblom was a Swedish surgeon and academic associated with Lund University, where he also served as rector. He is particularly associated with the study of hemobilia, bleeding into the biliary tract, and helped establish its clinical description, causes, and diagnosis in surgical literature....

Vivek Murthy is an American physician and public health official who served as Surgeon General of the United States during the Obama and Biden administrations. Trained in internal medicine, he used the office to address subjects including mental health, youth well-being, firearm violence, and the he...

American anesthesiologist Jerome Adams served as the 20th U.S. Surgeon General from 2017 to 2021, appointed by President Trump, with a focus on the opioid crisis and health equity.