John Fulkerson

John P. Fulkerson (born December 9, 1946) is an American orthopedic and sports medicine surgeon and professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation at Yale School of Medicine. He specializes in patellofemoral disorders, patellar instability, and sports knee surgery. He also published early work on quadriceps tendon ACL grafting, including all-soft-tissue central quadriceps free tendon techniques that later AANA and review literature identified as important antecedents of contemporary quadriceps tendon autograft reconstruction.

He has also been credited with describing medial quadriceps tendon-femoral ligament reconstruction for patellar instability and, later in his career, helping advance three-dimensional imaging and printing for patellofemoral surgical planning at Yale.

Education Fulkerson received a BA, cum laude, from Williams College and an MD, with honors, from Yale University in 1972.

Tibial tubercle osteotomy In 1983, Fulkerson described an oblique osteotomy that permitted combined anterior and medial transfer of the tibial tubercle.

Fulkerson and colleagues later published additional clinical work refining this approach, including a 1990 series on anteromedial tibial tubercle transfer without bone graft.

Quadriceps tendon ACL reconstruction In ACL surgery, Fulkerson and Rolf Langeland published a 1995 paper describing the central quadriceps tendon as an alternative cruciate ligament graft.

Patellar stabilization and 3D imaging In 2013, Fulkerson and Cory Edgar published an operative description of medial quadriceps tendon-femoral ligament reconstruction for prevention of patellar instability.

Selected publications He also edited the fourth edition of Disorders of the Patellofemoral Joint (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2004), a textbook repeatedly referenced in his Yale faculty profile.

Awards and honors Among honors listed by Yale and related professional sources are election to Alpha Omega Alpha while in medical school, the Bantam Award from Trinity College, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Francisco Bay Area Knee Society, Connecticut Orthopedist of the Year, the UConn sports medicine fellow educator award, the Patellofemoral Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and induction into the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Hall of Fame in 2023.