The great crusader hero

Kurt Semm: A laparoscopic crusader

A brief biography of Kurt Semm, the pioneer of laparoscopic appendectomy and inventor of various laparoscopic instruments are done, with special reference to his struggle to establish the foundation of minimally invasive surgery amongst his contemporary surgeons.

The Hero and the

Many entrepreneurial successes are attributed to the strong personalities of the new venture leaders, who offer vision, inspire loyalty, and display tenacity in solving problems to achieve their goals. Successful start-up ventures may bias perceptions of the anecdotal benefits of personality-driven leadership in firms too young to have established processes, operationally and organizationally. ...

Politicized Historiography and the Zionist-Crusader Analogy

Hero worship

This month, as the surest route to public embarassment, I decided to write about scientific heroes. Today’s world is full of talk of mentoring. Graduate students are told to find supervisors who will intellectually nourish them, emotionally support them, and teach them networking and grantspersonship. As I tap away, I can almost hear Uncle Syd muttering that the world is going to the dogs. In h...

My hero

[email protected] For the past 28 years I have talked about him, usually when people asked about the patients I treated as a hospital doctor or when asked about heroes. He was an inauspicious man, wrinkled by the years and with lungs which bore witness to decades of smoking. Late one night and after a long weekend on-call, I received a message from admissions telling me of his chest infect...