Born in
Héric,
Loire-Atlantique, Dr. Tessier first attended the
Ecole de Médecine in
Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, eventually receiving his
Doctor of Medicine degree from the
Faculté de Médecine de Paris in 1943. In 1942, during internship he started operating on people with
cleft lip and cleft palate and
Dupuytren's contracture. He joined the pediatric surgery service at Hospital St. Joseph in Paris in 1944. From late 1944 to 1946, he worked at the Center of
Maxillofacial Surgery of the Military Region of Paris in Hospital Puteaux. In 1949, he returned to Nantes to become a surgical consultant in
ophthalmology. Dr. Tessier started to improve surgical techniques to correct craniofacial deformations in the mid-1950s. He performed his first craniofacial operation in 1967. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he developed the following methods: • Using autogeneous (patient's own) bone grafts instead of
silicone or
acrylic to modify
skull and facial contours. • Transcranial and subcranial correction of
orbital hypertelorism. • Techniques for correcting
Treacher Collins syndrome. • Correction of
craniofacial clefts. In the 1970s, he began traveling to the
United States to demonstrate his procedures. Today, his techniques are applied not only to
plastic and
maxillofacial surgery, but also other specialties such as
trauma and
neurosurgery. He was an honorary member of the
American College of Surgeons, the
Royal College of Surgeons at London, and the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons. ==Positions and awards==