Norman Orentreich

Norman Orentreich (; December 26, 1922 – January 23, 2019) was a New York dermatologist and the father of modern hair transplantation. Orentreich created Estee Lauder Companies' Clinique line of skin care products, invented a number of dermatologic procedures and was the first president of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery. He is the founder of the Orentreich Medical Group and the Orentreich Foundation for the Advancement of Science, and the co-director of the latter organization. Hair transplantation The New York Academy of Medicine cited Orentreich's early research, as a young man, as being critical to later developments in hair transplantation: While at NYU’s Skin and Cancer hospital, Norman focused his clinical research on patients with hair loss, making use of small scalp skin grafts to better understand the pathophysiology of these diverse conditions. This led to the establishment of the theory of donor and recipient dominance, making it surgically possible to transplant healthy “androgen insensitive” hair from the back of the scalp to the “androgen sensitive” bald areas in the front where it would take and grow permanently. In 1952, Orentreich, having graduated from New York University School of Medicine in 1948, performed the first modern, and successful, hair transplants in his office in New York. By 1961, Orentreich had performed transplants on approximately 200 patients. By 1966, approximately 10,000 men over the world had undergone the treatment invented by Orentreich. According to the textbook Hair Transplantation, edited by Walter P. Unger, M.D. and Ronald Shapiro, M.D.: As at one time all roads led to Rome, no discussion of the origins of hair transplantation, as a treatment for MPB (Male Pattern Baldness) or of any of the men who first practiced this technique can begin without homage to this extraordinary clinician and scientist who gladly -- and from the beginning -- shared his knowledge with colleagues all over the world... The true "fathers" of hair restoration for MPB (male pattern baldness) all emerged as a result of collaboration or friendship with Dr. Orentreich. In the process of performing hair transplants, Orentreich discovered that "hair maintained the characteristics of the area from which it comes (the hair-bearing donor area), rather than to the area in which it is transplanted (the bald recipient area)," he coined this principle donor dominance.