Ivo Pitanguy

Ivo Pitanguy was a Brazilian plastic surgeon, born in Belo Horizonte in 1926 and active for most of his career in Rio de Janeiro, where he died in 2016. He studied medicine at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, trained further in the United States, France and England, and returned to Brazil in 1953 to work in a public hospital. He became widely known after the 1961 circus fire in Niteroi, when he and his team treated hundreds of burn victims, an experience that shaped his view that appearance bears on psychological well-being and social acceptance. He founded a private clinic in the Botafogo district of Rio de Janeiro that drew visiting surgeons from many countries to learn his techniques, and for decades he also gave free surgical care at the Santa Casa da Misericordia hospital. He wrote books on plastic surgery and on living well, and belonged to both the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the National Academy of Medicine. The day before he died he carried the Olympic flame in Rio de Janeiro.