1869-1939

American Neurosurgeon

Harvey Cushing was generally acknowledged during his lifetime as the world's greatest brain surgeon. He invented many basic neurosurgical procedures, operated on tumors previously considered inoperable, and worked closely with pathologists, endocrinologists, and other medical specialists to understand and classify various brain lesions and their outcomes.

Cushing was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the youngest of ten children of Betsey Maria Williams Cushing and Henry Kirke Cushing. His father, grandfather Erastus Cushing, and great-grandfather David Cushing were all physicians.

He received his A.B. from Yale University in 1891 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1895. After a one-year internship at Massachusetts General Hospital, he became a resident surgeon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and an instructor in surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He studied under William Stewart Halsted (1852-1922) at Hopkins from 1896-1900, then under Emil Theodor...