William Williams Keen (
January 19,
1837 -
June 7,
1932) was the first
U.S. brain surgeon.
Keen was born in Philadelphia. He studied at Brown University, where he graduated in 1859. He graduated in medicine from Jefferson Medical College in 1862. During the American Civil War, he worked for the U.S. Army as a surgeon. After the war, and two years of studies in Paris and Berlin, he started lecturing surgical pathology in Philadelphia, where he founded the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. He was the father of Dora Keen, the Alpinist.
He became known in the medical community around the world for inventing several new procedures in brain surgery, including drainage of the cerebral ventricles and removals of large brain tumors.
Keen also participated in a secret surgical operation to remove a cancerous jaw tumor on US President Grover Cleveland in 1893.
