Emil Theodor Kocher

Emil Theodor Kocher (August 25, 1841 – July 27, 1917), Nobel Prize winner in 1909 for "his work on the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid gland".

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He is considered as the developer of thyroid surgery.

History

Kocher was born in Berne. He studied in Zurich, Berlin, London and Vienna, and obtained his doctorate in Berne in 1865. In 1872, he succeeded Georg Albert Lucke as Ordinary Professor of Surgery and Director of the University Surgical Clinic at Berne. He published works on a number of subjects other than the thyroid gland including haemostasis, antiseptic treatments, surgical infectious diseases, on gunshot wounds, acute osteomyelitis, the theory of strangulated hernia, and abdominal surgery. His new ideas on the thyroid gland were initially controversial but his successful treatment of goitre with a steadily decreasing mortality rate soon won him recognition. The prize money, from the Nobel prize he received, helped him to establish the Kocher Institute in Berne.

Trivia

A number of instruments and surgical techniques are named after him as well as the Kocher-Debre-Semelaigne syndrome.

See also: Kocher manoeuvre