Theodor Kocher was born in Bern on August 5, 1841, attained his medical degree in 1865 after studying medicine at the local university, and became the Professor of Surgery there in 1872. By the turn of the century, he was famed as one of the innovative experimental surgeons of his time and, in 1909, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his seminal contributions to thyroid surgery. Both H. Cushing and W. Halsted benefited intellectually and technically from their interactions with Kocher and Bern. Kocher provided the academic template and personal motif upon which Cushing molded his subsequent neurosurgical career. Halsted's relationship with Kocher was more of a mutual personal admiration supported by an exchange of clinical and scientific information. Overall however, the Swiss influence on American surgery reflected interactions at many levels and included H. Banga, N. Senn, A. Ochsner and M. Stamm. These Swiss-American surgeons all well recognized in their own right provided significant contributions which included the introduction of antisepsis, innovative surgical techniques, educational reforms and the formation of the American College of Surgeons.