Jacques Daviel

Jacques Daviel (11 August 1696 – 30 September 1762 ) was a French ophthalmologist credited with originating the first significant advance in cataract surgery since couching was invented in antiquity. Daviel performed the first documented planned primary extracapsular cataract extraction on 18 September 1750 in Cologne on a clerical official named Gilles Noupres.

Daviel earned his medical degree from the Medical School of Rouen, in the Province of Normandy. He practiced in Marseille, Province of Provence, where he was affiliated with the medical school there, then restricted his practice to ophthalmology in 1728. He was on the staff of Hospital d'Invalides and became oculist to Louis XV.

In March 1756 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1759, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Daviel died of apoplexy in 1762 while on a trip to Geneva, Switzerland.