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COLLEGIAL COMMENTARIES

tance and demands of being an exemplary and dynamic leader farsurpasses average standards all over the world. The wisdom ofhis work has surely the flavors of traditional Chinese principles ofstrong and successful leadership. It is written in the historicalChinese book Art of War by Sun Tzu that “[n]o leader should puttroops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no leadershould fight a battle simply out of pique. But a kingdom that hasonce been destroyed can never come again into being; nor canthe dead ever be brought back to life. Hence the enlightenedleader is heedful, and the good leader full of caution.” For sure,the Zhou dynasty will continue to grow in strength and stay thecourse. I personally hope that Professor Liangfu Zhou will carryon making amazing art, the art of neurosurgery, as long aspossible. My heartfelt congratulations on your nomination!

1878-8750/$ - see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1016/j.wneu.2011.10.002

Takeshi Kawase, M.D.Department of Neurosurgery, School ofMedicine, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

I t may be a common feeling for all thepeople who ever met professor Zhou thathis spirit is younger than 50 years. I

ecame acquainted with him more than 12 years ago, but mympression of him has not changed in that time. Our first meeting

as in New Orleans, at the reception of the American Associa-ion of Neurological Surgeons Congress in 1999. Speakingrankly, he was not a man of dignified appearance, which wasommon in a Chinese professor, but rather more relaxed. Duringy first meeting with him, therefore, I did not realize that heas one of the great founders of Chinese neurosurgery! He

ounded neurosurgery in Huashan Hospital in Shanghai in 1970nd became a professor in 1989 after having studied in thenited States. In 2001, he became the Director of Neurosur-ery Hospital and Institute, which is a leader in neurosurgery

n Shanghai. He introduced microsurgery during its earlytages to China, and the number of surgeries increasedhreefold in those 10 years in his hospital. His interest waslways on scientific and technical points, in addition to revisingicrosurgical techniques.

e was interested in the field of skull base surgery, and I heardis high-level presentations frequently, both abroad and in China.e was completely different from other senior neurosurgeons,ho could not speak English well. He published more than 130apers in English and trained postgraduate students with inter-ational motivations. Therefore, he has been respected and

oved by younger generation not only in Shanghai but in China aswhole for his highly accomplished scientific career and gener-us mind. He received many awards and prizes in those 20 yearsor his long scientific and educational career, and he was selecteds a Chinese Engineering Academician in 2009.

hen I met him this summer in Beijing, it was a miracle that hisiberal and scientific orientation was further advanced even thoughe was older than 70 years of age. He might demonstrate a concepthat the man who has been thinking academically survives longerhan the man thinking politically. I sympathize with his way of life

ecause a doctrine of my university has the similar concept, i.e.,

228 www.SCIENCEDIRECT.com

the pen is mightier than the sword.” He is a man who leads notnly in China but in the whole world as well, and I fully congratulaterofessor Liangfu Zhou for being selected as Neurosurgeon of theear 2012 by WORLD NEUROSURGERY.

1878-8750/$ - see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1016/j.wneu.2011.11.028

Peter Nakaji, M.D.Neurosurgery Residency Program Director,Division of Neurological Surgery, Barrow

Neurological Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

Among a host of worthy candidates, therecognition of Professor Liangfu Zhouas the WORLD NEUROSURGERY Neuro-

surgeon of the Year can be received with warm enthusiasm. Itmight be too easy for an outsider to dismiss the remarkableachievements of Professor Zhou and his department, based atHuashan Hospital, in Shanghai as a mere epiphenomenon of thestunning rise of China as a whole. Yet, to do so would be disingen-uous: Not all other centers have grown so quickly or so well, norhave they kept pace so admirably with the broader field of neuro-surgery, which itself has undergone many transformations duringthe same period. From a unit of 60 beds in 1984, Huashan hasbecome the largest center in China and one of the largest any-where: More than 15,000 surgical cases are now treated there eachyear. This remarkable growth, however, reflects scope and qualityas well as volume. Huashan now can hold itself with pride as anequal among the great centers of the world.

Professor Zhou can be credited with excellent navigation throughthe opportune but also turbulent times that span his career.Shanghai has been a great city for thousands of years. However,in the early years of Professor Zhou’s tenure at Huashan, it wasnot the ideal setting for an ambitious neurosurgical enterpriseand especially not for exploring the new and innovative inneurosurgery. Nonetheless, Professor Zhou applied his consid-erable energy and creativity to doing just that. When China wasstill isolated from contact with much of the outside world in the1970s, he worked on microscope design and was the first inChina to advocate the adoption of microsurgery and microsurgi-cal approaches. He performed some of the earliest bypasses foraneurysm treatment in China. As both practitioner and promoter,he embraced skull base surgery, radiosurgery, neuronavigation,and minimally invasive techniques. More recently, he has em-braced technology as a way to make operations safer, forexample, by pairing neuronavigation with functional magneticresonance imaging and magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

The significance of Professor Zhou’s efforts on behalf of Chineseneurosurgery, especially in earlier decades when China was notas open as today, resources were more limited, and the ex-change of ideas was more challenging, cannot be overstated. Forthese efforts he is credited appropriately by his peers for his keyrole in developing their specialty in China. His personal qualities,which reflect the Confucian virtues of honesty, diligence, andprudence, have served him well and earned the admiration of hiscountrymen. He now plays the role of the elder statesman withaplomb, still praised by his young colleagues for his interest in thedevelopment of their careers and in promoting neurosurgical

excellence throughout China.

77 [2]: 226-232, FEBRUARY 2012 WORLD NEUROSURGERY