Yasargil
Mahmut Gazi Yaşargil
Just three weeks before his 100th birthday, Mahmut Gazi Yaşargil passed away on 10 June 2025 in Stäfa, Canton of Zurich. He was honorary member of the Swiss League Against Epilepsy and awarded with the Tissot Medal.
Mahmut Gazi Yaşargil was born on 6 July 1925 in Lice in eastern Turkey. After attending school in Ankara, he studied in Western Europe, travelling via Vienna to Jena. There he began his medical studies in 1944 and soon afterwards moved to Basel, where he graduated in 1950. After training positions in psychiatry, internal medicine and general surgery, as well as a research position in neuroanatomy, he moved to the Department of Neurosurgery at the University Hospital of Zurich (USZ) in 1953 for specialist training. After his time as resident, he became a senior physician in 1957, followed by his habilitation and appointment as a private lecturer in 1960. As part of a research fellowship in the USA, he developed microvascular surgery together with Raymond Donaghy.
After returning to Zurich in 1969, he was appointed professor and subsequently introduced vascular and other micro-neurosurgery techniques, including the surgical microscope and new instruments he had developed. In 1973, he succeeded Hugo Krayenbühl as director of the Neurosurgery Clinic at the University Hospital of Zurich. After retiring in Zurich, he held a professorship in neurosurgery at the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA, for many years. From 2013, he has been affiliated with the Department of Neurosurgery at Yeditepe University in Istanbul.
In the field of epileptology, his name will be remembered for introducing transsylvian selective amygdala-hippocampectomy (sAHE) into clinical practice for the treatment of pharmacoresistant temporal lobe epilepsy.
Mahmut Gazi Yaşargil received numerous awards for his outstanding achievements, including the Tissot Medal from the Swiss League Against Epilepsy in 2015. In 1983, he married nurse Dianne Bader-Gibson Yaşargil, who had been assisting him in operations since 1973 and actively contributed to many of his publications. For those who want to know more, we recommend a YouTube video recorded in Stäfa at the end of April 2025, in which Yasargil celebrates his 100th birthday – sadly too early. You can see him talk very humorously about his private and professional life: Professor Gazi Yasargil at Age 100.
Günter Krämer, Zurich