Thursday, Apr. 01, 2010

Tomoaki Kato

Age: 46
Occupation: Surgeon
Previous TIME 100 Appearances: 0

Removing tumors is now routine for thousands of cancer surgeons, but Kato is making a specialty of slicing out the deepest, most embedded ones that others consider inoperable. He's now performed two groundbreaking surgeries that lasted 15 and 23 hours each, in which he removed and replaced most of six organs from two patients in order to reach cancerous growths ensnared among arteries.