Maurice Edmond Müller

Maurice Edmond Müller (28 March 1918 – 10 May 2009 ) was a Swiss orthopedic surgeon who was instrumental in the development of internal fixation techniques to treat bone fractures and who also significantly advanced the development of the hip prostheses. For his work in these areas he has been honored with numerous awards. On 24 August 2002, the International Society of Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology (SICOT) named him the "Orthopedic Surgeon of the Century" at a congress in San Diego.

Müller was also the patron who founded the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland. He studied medicine at the universities of Neuchâtel, Bern, and Lausanne and received his M.D. from the University of Zürich in 1946. In 1944, he was visited by a patient who had a bone fracture treated in World War II by the German surgeon Gerhard Küntscher, who had fixed the fracture using an implanted nail. This and another visit by a patient who had a hip implant made in Paris determined Müller to specialize in this area. Inspired by the work of Belgian surgeon Robert Danis, Müller developed within two years new tools and fixation implants for orthopedic surgery, marketed by two Swiss companies and from the mid-1970 on also by Synthes USA. Since 2004, all three companies are part of the Synthes Holding AG.

In 1967, Müller founded another company, Protek AG, to market his hip prostheses, which he had developed in the early 1960s, inspired by the work of John Charnley. From 1974 on, profits went to the Maurice E. Müller foundation, and donated through a foundation formed for this purpose 70 million Swiss francs ) for the construction of the museum.

Müller died on 10 May 2009 in Bern.

Works M. E. Müller et al.: Manual of Internal Fixation, AO-ASIF, 1980. (3rd ed., 1995). M. E. Müller et al.: The Comprehensive Classification of Fractures of Long Bones, Springer 1994. .