18 Oct Obituary Viktor E. Meyer
March 5, 1937- October 18, 2024
Viktor Meyer was born in 1937. He graduated at the University of Bern, Switzerland, in 1966. His surgical education was mainly at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Zurich and at the Institute for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, New York University Medical Center, USA. He was Board certified in General Surgery, Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery and Hand Surgery. In June 1974 he successfully re-attached a hand amputated through the metacarpus and in 1975 he established the first Replantation Center in Switzerland, which at the time was one of the first replantation-centers in Europe.
From 1987 – 2005 Viktor Meyer was full Professor of Surgery and Head of the Department for Hand- Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Zurich and from 1990-1992 he acted as Medical Director. He received many awards and honors. The Georg Friedrich Goetz- Award of the University of Zurich for his significant work in Microsurgery, a Honorary Membership of the Swiss Society for Surgery, a Honorary Membership of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand, Member of Honor of the Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences and the Romanian Society for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Honorary Member of the World Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery and in 2011 he was elected as ”IFSSH Pioneer of Hand Surgery”, Viktor was founding member, past-president and Honorary Member of the German Speaking Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery, past-president and Honorary Member of the Swiss Society for Plastic- Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery and member of the Executive Council of IPRAS. He acted as secretary and president of the International Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery.
He was an active member of the group that initiated the merger of the International Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery and the International Microsurgical Society to one new society: the “World Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery” (WSRM). In 1999 he was elected in Los Angeles as first president of this society. Together with Fu-Chan Wei he organized the first congress of this new society in Taipei. In February 2005 he retired from his academic position as Professor of Surgery and was elected as the first Dean of the newly founded Swiss Academy of Veterinary Medicine in 2007.
Viktor was frequently invited as lecturer in various countries outside Europe and wrote numerous articles and book chapters and was editorial board member of several journals. He was an active member of EURAPS from 1994 on.
Viktor Meyer passed away on October 18, 2024 at the age of 87 years after a short illness.
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