The surgeon who led medical teams that performed the world’s first partial face transplant in France last year will deliver the annual Arnold G. Diethelm Lecture at UAB on Sept. 7. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be at 5 p.m. in the Margaret Cameron Spain Auditorium, corner of 19th Street South and Seventh Avenue (620 19th St. S.).

Jean-Michel Dubernard, M.D., organized the surgeons who performed the world’s second hand-forearm transplant, in 1998 (the first was in Ecuador in 1964, before modern drugs and microsurgery). The medical pioneer also has developed techniques to transplant pancreas glands and other tissues.

The lecture honors professor emeritus Arnold G. Diethelm, M.D., former chair of the UAB Department of Surgery. Diethelm organized UAB’s highly successful kidney transplant program, and performed the first such transplant in Alabama in 1968. He has been a friend of the French surgeon since they were in a surgical research fellowship program at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Harvard Medical School from 1965-1967.

“Dr. Dubernard is a pioneer in the field of composite tissue transplantation,” said Devin E. Eckhoff, M.D., director of the UAB Division of Transplantation.

Dubernard is credited with making the decision to perform the controversial transplant Nov. 27 on a 38-year-old French woman whose lips, chin and nose had been partially torn off by her dog six months earlier. He led one of two surgical teams in the historic 15-hour operation. The missing portion of face was replaced by that of an organ donor. “I now have a face like everyone else,” she told reporters in February.

In addition to his medical career, Dubernard is a former deputy mayor of France’s second largest city, Lyon, and is a member of the French National Assembly.