Britain
Harold Gillies
1882–1960 Plastic surgeon; reconstructor of faces
Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, Harold Gillies was an ear, nose and throat surgeon who was shocked by the facial wounds he saw in France in 1915. He persuaded the army to open a special unit at Aldershot and then the Queen's Hospital at Sidcup, which opened in 1917. There he and his colleagues developed the tubed pedicle skin graft, bone grafts and methods of rebuilding noses, jaws and eyelids, working with an anesthetist, dentists, artists and mask-makers. Thousands of men were treated. He wrote Plastic Surgery of the Face in 1920, was knighted in 1930, and is generally considered the father of modern plastic surgery.