William Halsted

William Halsted was the founding father of modern surgical oncology who developed the radical mastectomy for breast cancer, which dominated breast cancer surgery for nearly a century. He established en-bloc resection principles based on the belief that cancer spreads centrifugally, and his systematic approach to cancer surgery introduced rigorous anatomical technique, asepsis, and gentle tissue handling to American surgery. He also trained generations of surgeons through the residency training model he created at Johns Hopkins. While subsequent decades shifted toward breast-conserving surgery, Halsted's conceptual framework of systematic oncological resection remains foundational to surgical oncology.