History
In 1974, Dr. Murray recruited a newly minted plastic surgeon, John B. Mulliken, and an oral surgeon, Leonard B. Kaban, to join him in an integrated Division of Plastic and Oral Surgery. Joseph Upton III, a young hand surgeon, joined the team five years later. Dr. Murray and his team served both the Brigham and Women’s and Boston Children’s hospitals. Dr. Murray performed the first midfacial advancement in the United States. Upon learning that Dr. Paul Tessier was well ahead in the emerging field of craniofacial surgery, Dr. Murray invited Dr. Tessier to operate in Boston for one to two weeks annually for 12 years. Dr. Mulliken and Dr. Kaban were privileged to work alongside these surgical giants.
Dr. Mulliken investigated induced osteogenesis and the biology of vascular anomalies in Dr. Judah Folkman’s Laboratory. He wrote the first textbook devoted to vascular anomalies (1988), founded the International Society for the Study of Vascular Anomalies (ISSVA), and established the first center for vascular anomalies in the country at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Mulliken initiated our craniofacial fellowship in 1978 and has served as Director of the Craniofacial Center at Boston Children’s Hospital since 1986. He and his collaborators discovered the causative genes for several craniofacial and vascular anomalies. Dr. Kaban became the Chief of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at UCSF and MGH. Dr. Upton is recognized nationally and internationally as a premier pediatric hand and microsurgeon.
From 1967 until 2006, the leadership of plastic surgery was held jointly between the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Elof Eriksson was the Chief of both Divisions from 1986 until 2006. In 2006, Dr. John Meara was hired as the first full-time Plastic Surgeon-in-Chief at Boston Children’s Hospital, and at that time, the program was elevated to Department status. That same year, Dr. Bonnie Padwa, who operated at MGH and BCH, was brought on as the Department’s first full-time Oral Surgeon. Today, she serves as Oral Surgeon-in-Chief within the Department of Plastic and Oral Surgery. Currently, the Department includes eight plastic surgeons and four oral surgeons and offers a comprehensive spectrum of craniofacial, pediatric plastic, and oral surgery. In 2019, Dr. Ingrid Ganske became the Craniofacial Fellowship Director.
A Lasting Legacy
Dr. John B. Mulliken’s passing in January 2026 marked the loss of one of the defining figures in the history of Boston Children’s Hospital and in plastic and reconstructive surgery worldwide. Following distinguished military service as a Major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, including leadership of the 43rd Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea and service as Chief of Surgery at Cushing Hospital at Ft. Devens, he devoted more than five decades to Boston Children’s. He served as Co-Director of the Vascular Anomalies Center, Director of the Craniofacial Center, and Director of the Cleft Lip and Palate Program, helping build each into a world-renowned center for care, research, and education.
Dr. Mulliken transformed the fields of vascular anomalies and craniofacial surgery through pioneering research, surgical innovation, and scholarship. His classification system for vascular anomalies became a cornerstone of diagnosis and treatment worldwide, and his textbook Vascular Anomalies: Hemangiomas and Malformations remains a definitive resource. He published more than 500 scientific articles and book chapters, advanced cleft lip and nasal repair techniques, earned the James Barrett Brown Prize for his single-stage bilateral cleft lip repair, and helped identify genes responsible for several craniofacial disorders.
He was equally admired as a teacher and mentor, inspiring generations of trainees with his precision, compassion, and commitment to children with facial differences. Colleagues remember not only his brilliance, but also his humility, generosity, love of history and the arts, and devotion to his family. His legacy lives on in the programs he built, the field he helped shape, and the countless patients, families, and trainees whose lives he touched.
