Professor Earl Owen, known as the Father of Microsurgery designed micro instruments, microscopes and new operations to save congenitally abnormal babies from dying at birth in the 1960s.
He succeeded. One day a 2 year old child came to Emergency with his index finger amputated cleanly. With his new Zeiss Operating Microscope and the research experience from even smaller children, he replanted that index finger successfuly (1970), and set up in one of Sydney's Major University Hospitals the world's first Microsurgery Reconstruction Center.

Requests for possible other new operations came in, and his research teams perfected many new micro operations.

Professor Owen did the first MICRO-REVERSAL of a VASECTOMY for an Australian man successfuly in 1971.

Women wanted TUBAL STERILISATION'S REVERSED and after further research he did the first successful MICROREVERSAL of a WOMAN'S TUBAL STERILISATION in 1972.

Many other operations were perfected by his Microsearch Foundation, but you would probably only have heard of his most famous operation in 1998 in France (where he also is a Professor) when he organised and performed (with his International Team of Surgeons) the world's first successful HAND TRANSPLANTATION.

The co-leader of that team and the same group that also performed the world's first DOUBLE HAND TRANSPLANTATION
(in Lyon, France, on January 13th 2000) and another successful double hand transplantation in May 2003 was Professor J.M. Dubernard who has been working/researching and organising teaching courses with Professor Owen for 30 years, and was made head of Urology and Transplantation in Lyon, France since the 1970s.