During the First World War, Dr. Varaztad Hovannes Kazanjian (1879 in Turkey -1974) used his skills as a prosthetic dentist to reconstruct the faces of thousands of soldiers disfigured during combat. He is considered to be the founder of the modern practice of plastic surgery.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Kazanjian became director of the Plastic Surgery Clinic of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and the Massachusetts General Hospital. Subsequently he became professor of clinical oral surgery at Harvard Medical School. In 1941, he became the first professor of plastic surgery at Harvard.

Kazanjian’s visionary treatments and surgical methods are expounded in 150 medical articles. He is also the co-author, with John M. Converse, of the groundbreaking volume The Surgical Treatment of Facial Injuries (1949).

Kazanjian served as president of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgery, and the New England Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.