# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/emil-theodor-kocher
# Generated: 2026-09-01T09:21:11.363Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/emil-theodor-kocher"
name: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
slug: "emil-theodor-kocher"
description: "He made cutting into the throat routine. Before Kocher, thyroid surgery killed nearly half the patients who survived the table; after him, it killed fewer than one in a hundred."
tagline: "Surgeon, laureate of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Medicine (1841-1917)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Emil_Theodor_Kocher.jpg"
gender: "male"
country:
  name: "Switzerland"
  isoCode: "CH"
category:
  name: "Doctors"
  slug: "doctors"
profileType:
  name: "Doctor"
  slug: "doctor"
  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1841-08-25"
deathDate: "1917-07-27"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           58.33
  momentum:             17.10657370517928
  historical:           22.087516
  currentAttention:     100
  sourceConfidence:     60
  profileCompleteness:  70
  trendDirection:       "BREAKOUT"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  138
  category: 82
tags:
  - name: "Doctors"
    slug: "doctors"
  - name: "Doctor"
    slug: "doctor"
  - name: "Medicine"
    slug: "medicine"
  - name: "Switzerland"
    slug: "switzerland"
  - name: "Europe"
    slug: "europe"
  - name: "19th Century"
    slug: "19th-century"
sources:
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    title: "Wikipedia"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Wikidata"
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    type:  "DATABASE"
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    title: "امیل تئودور کوخر"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Эміль Тэадор Кохер"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%95%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BB_%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D1%80_%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%85%D0%B5%D1%80"
    title: "Емил Теодор Кохер"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
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    title: "Έμιλ Τέοντορ Κόχερ"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "امیل تئودور کوخر"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Theodor_Kocher"
    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "תאודור קוכר"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Emil Theodor Kocher"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%AA%D9%8A%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%88%D8%B1_%D9%83%D9%88%D8%AE%D8%B1"
    title: "تيودور كوخر"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "تيودور كوخر"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"

# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Emil Theodor Kocher was born in Switzerland on 25 August 1841 and trained as a physician at a time when operating meant gambling with sepsis and death. He brought aseptic technique and methodical science to the surgeon's trade, then turned his attention to the thyroid — a gland most colleagues considered too dangerous to touch. His systematic work on thyroid physiology, pathology, and surgical technique dropped operative mortality below 1%, transforming a near-certain death sentence into a survivable procedure. In 1909 he became the first Swiss citizen and the first surgeon to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He died on 27 July 1917, having spent five decades proving that precision could beat infection and that the throat was not, after all, forbidden ground.