Erich Mühe (23 May 1938 – 20 November 2005)[citation needed] was a German surgeon known for performing the first laparoscopic cholecystectomy in 1985.
Erich Mühe completed medical school in 1966 and finished his surgical training at the University of Erlangen in 1973.
[1] The achievement has also been credited to two French surgeons: Phillipe Mouret, who first performed the surgery in 1987; and Francois Dubois, who did the same in 1988.
In 1992, the German Society of Surgery—which had initially rejected Mühe's work—awarded him its top honour, the Anniversary Award.
[3] The following year, the president of the society's 1986 congress apologised to Mühe, describing his work as "without a doubt one of the greatest original achievements of German medicine in recent history".