AO celebrates birthday of founding father Ernst Baumann

The AO today celebrates the birthday of one of its most senior founding fathers: Prof Ernst Baumann, MD, who was born on August 22, 1890, and therefore 20 to 30 years senior to the other founding members. 

Baumann studied in Basel, Switzerland, and Kiel, Germany. In 1914, shortly before the start of World War I, he was resident physician at the Stadtkrankenhaus Offenbach am Main (now Sana Klinikum Offenbach). Returning to Switzerland, he opened his own practice in rural Rothrist. In 1924, he went on to train and work as a surgeon, obstetrician, and gynecologist at the Kantonsspital Aarau.

From 1928 to 1960, he was chief physician at the district hospital in Langenthal, his birthplace and his final resting place. During World War II, he was stationed at the Eastern Front as a surgeon. He received honorary professorship from the University of Bern in 1957.

Baumann was also Nestor of the Swiss Traumatologists and his best-known works are those on pediatric elbow fractures with vertical extension and on pseudoarthrosis of the internal malleolus. Baumann was also the inventor of the "Baumannsche Schraube," a self-drilling and self-tapping screw which was used in the early days of the AO for fixation of the tibia.

On the evening before the annual assembly of the Swiss Society for Trauma and Occupational Diseases (SGUB), of which Baumann was president, a group of surgeon friends, including Baumann, met at the Hotel Elite in Biel, Switzerland, to officially found the Association for the Study of Internal Fixation, known today as the AO.