Frederic E. Mohs

Frederic Edward Mohs (1910 to 2002) was an American physician and general surgeon who spent most of his career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He developed Mohs micrographic surgery, a technique for removing skin cancer that achieves high cure rates even for high-risk lesions while preserving healthy tissue, beginning work on it as a medical student in the 1930s. General surgeons were initially reluctant to adopt the method because it required specialized pathology knowledge; the procedure is now most often performed by dermatologists trained in dermatopathology.