History

The Society right from the beginning was founded in a spirit of internationalism, of conjoining researchers and scientists from different European countries and overseas, from clinical and experimental research and from various disciplines. The ESSR, formerly the ESES -European Society for Experimental Surgery -was founded the 17th February 1966 near Nancy, France: 'La Société Européenne de Chirurgie Expérimentale a été fondée le 17 Fevrier 1966 a l' Abbaye des Prémontrés a Pont a Mousson, près de Nancy, France, au cours d'un Colloque organisé par le Laboratoire de Chirurgie Expérimentale de la Faculté de Médicine de Nancy'. In the early seventies it was felt that the term 'experimental surgery' was more and more inadequate to describe the complexity of research in surgery. At the General Assembly in Salzburg, May 16th 1974, it was decided to change the name of The Society to 'European Society for Surgical Research' - ESSR.In 1967 The Society started out with 162 members, predominantly from France, Belgium, Italy and Germany. As soon as 1970 the number of members had increased to 411. During the years there was a steady increase with a peak in 1995, when the maximum with 769 members was reached. Between 14 and 27 applications for membership and 2 to 4 written resignations reach the General Secretary per year. According to the by-laws of The Society a number of members, that could not be contacted or failed to clear their membership dues for three consecutive years in a row were excluded from the membership directory in 1996. On March 5th The Society has now 697 members from 43 different countries all over the world.

Aim

At that time this basic concept -namely to bring together surgeons and engineers, immunologists and biologists and so forth -was outrageously new and effective. Today the concept still is valid, but the large number of specialist meetings, concentrating just on one or two topics, seem to threaten the acceptance of a Society that covers all aspects of surgical research. However, it has to be emphasized that The Society has several outstanding features, that are not shared by any other research society: Besides the multidisciplinary, multinational and -sometimes - multilingual aspects, probably one of the most distinctive features is The Society's stress on youth and the promotion of young researchers. There are age limits not only for the president and the General Committee (45 years) but also for the most prestigeous award of the Society, the Walter- Brendel-Award (45 years). There are a varying number of Young Researcher Awards per year (age limit 30 to 35 years) and finally the Student Award, especially for undergraduate researchers presenting their work at the annual meeting.

Modified from B Nordlinger, MA Scherer, L Teot (Eds) Proceedings of the ESSR, Hieronymus, Muenchen 1996