Kurt Karl Stephan Semm (23 March 1927 – 16 July 2003) was a German gynecologist and pioneer in minimally invasive surgery.

In the 1960s Semm started to use laparoscopy – he named it pelviscopy[4] - for gynecologic indications, initially as a diagnostic tool, but soon realizing that the laparoscopic approach had potential for interventive surgery.

His experience as toolmaker let him to found the WISAP medical instrument company in 1959 allowing him to developed numerous instruments among them an automated electronic CO2 insufflator, uterine manipulators, thermocoagulators to stop bleeding, and extra- and intracorporeal endoscopic knotting devices to tie off vessels or remove organs.

[2] During the 1970s Semm pioneered numerous gynecologic laparoscopic operations so that the end of the decade he had performed myomectomies, ovariectomies, ovarian cysts resections, removals of tubal pregnancy, and others.

[6] On 13 September 1980 Semm performed the first laparoscopic appendectomy opening up the path for a much wider application of minimally invasive surgery.

In 1985 Erich Mühe showed that Semm's laparoscopic approach could be applied for cholecystectomy,[8] and it became the gold standard within a decade and remains so.