Emil Theodor Kocher

Infobox Medical Person
name = Emil Theodor Kocher


imagesize = 180px
caption = Emil Theodor Kocher
birth_date = August 25, 1841
birth_place = Berne, Switzerland
death_date = death date and age|1917|7|27|1841|8|25
death_place =
profession = Surgeon
specialty = Thyroid surgery
research_field =
known_for = Developer of Thyroid surgery
years_active =
education =
work_institutions = University of Berne
prizes= Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1909)
relations =

Emil Theodor Kocher (August 25, 1841 – July 27, 1917) was a Swiss physician, medical researcher, and Nobel laureate for his work in the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid.

Kocher was born in Berne, Switzerland. He studied in Zürich, Berlin, London and Vienna, and obtained his doctorate in Berne in 1865. In 1872, he succeeded Georg Albert Lücke as Ordinary Professor of Surgery and Director of the University Surgical Clinic at the "Inselspital" in Berne. He published works on a number of subjects other than the thyroid gland including hemostasis, 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 goiter 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.

A number of instruments and surgical techniques (for example, the Kocher manoeuvre) are named after him, as well as the Kocher-Debre-Semelaigne syndrome.

External links

* [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1909/kocher-bio.html Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1901-1921] , Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1967
* [http://www.tki.unibe.ch/theodor.htm Universität Bern - Theodor Kocher ] at www.tki.unibe.ch
* [http://www.tki.unibe.ch/ Universität Bern - Theodor Kocher Institut - Home ] at www.tki.unibe.ch