Professor Lars Leksell's

Swedish physician and Professor of Neurosurgery at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Professor Lars Leksell introduced his stereotactic instrument for human functional neurosurgery in 1949. The basic component was the Cartesian co-ordinate frame.

Born in Fassberg, Sweden on November 23rd 1907, Lars Leksell completed medical studies at the Karolinska Institute and began his Neurosurgical training in 1935.

In 1951 Lars Leksell along with the physicist and radiobiologist Borje Larsson, developed the concept of radiosurgery.This achieved a new non-invasive method of destroying discrete anatomical regions within the brain while minimising the effect on the surrounding tissues. This in later years became the ‘Gamma Knife'.

Lars Leksell became professor at Lund between 1958 and 1960, and later from 1960 up to his ‘retirement' in 1974 was Professor of Neurosurgery at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Lars Leksell was honoured internationally by many surgical and neurosurgical societies and decorated by many governments.

Described as one of the great innovators and investigators in modern Neurosurgery, he was renowned for his continued search for improvement to his devices and creations.