The Baker Gordon Symposium, Miami
In February 1967, two Miami plastic surgeons held a meeting about aesthetic surgery because the specialty's own organisations would not, and put live operations on the programme. It was the first American meeting to do either. It ran for sixty years, the society that became The Aesthetic Society was conceived in its audience, and its final meeting was held in February 2026.
Why it matters to rhinoplasty
Three things this meeting established that the rhinoplasty teaching circuit still runs on.
It made aesthetic surgery a subject you could hold a meeting about
The founders' own account, printed in the final programme, is blunt about why they started: the first symposium "represented a response to the frustration of that era regarding organized plastic surgery's refusal to provide a forum which emphasized aesthetic surgery education." Cosmetic operations were done and not discussed. A standing annual meeting turned them into a body of technique that could be taught, argued over and improved. It is the same function the Dallas Rhinoplasty Meeting would perform for rhinoplasty specifically from 1984.
Rests on: the 2026 programme, welcome letter.
It put the operation itself on the programme
"The inaugural Symposium highlighted not only lectures, but for the first time at a national meeting, included live surgery demonstrations." Live surgery is now how technique moves: the Dallas meeting, the rhinoplasty society meetings and the cadaver courses all descend from that format, and the video archive on this site is its current form. What a surgeon does with their hands is not fully transmissible in prose, which is the argument for the format and also its risk: an audience watches one operator's best case.
Rests on: the 2026 programme.
The Aesthetic Society was formed by the surgeons sitting in it
By the meeting's own account, "a small group of plastic surgeons attending the first Baker Gordon Symposium recognized that advancements in aesthetic surgery required a national organization whose mission statement was to promote aesthetic surgery education. This led to the formation of the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery." That society, now The Aesthetic Society, publishes Aesthetic Surgery Journal, one of the journals this site's archive indexes first, and one of the four that carry most of the rhinoplasty literature.
Rests on: the 2026 programme.
The record
| Date | What is documented | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 3–4 February 1967 | First symposium, Miami, founded by Thomas J. Baker and Howard L. Gordon | 2026 programme |
| 1967 | First national meeting to include live surgery demonstrations | 2026 programme |
| 1967 onward | The American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery forms out of that first audience | 2026 programme |
| 2016 | Fiftieth anniversary tribute published in Aesthetic Surgery Journal | ASJ 2016;36(2):246 |
| 26 December 2020 | Thomas J. Baker dies | Memoriam page |
| 2025 | The 59th meeting is billed "a prelude to our Grand Finale in 2026" | Memoriam page |
| 5–7 February 2026 | The 60th and final meeting, Hyatt Regency Miami; director James M. Stuzin; sponsored by the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine | 2026 programme |
Rhinoplasty sits inside its live-surgery track ("Face Lifting and Rhinoplasty"). Faculty for the final meeting with rhinoplasty practices include Rod Rohrich, Dean Toriumi, Aaron Kosins and Sam Rizk.
In the founders' words for the last meeting: "The 60th Baker Gordon Symposium, our Grand Finale, represents a bittersweet moment, recognizing that even exceptional experiences cannot last forever."
What is disputed
- Howard L. Gordon's biography and death date are not established from a primary source and are not stated here.
- The claim that this was the first US meeting devoted to aesthetic surgery, and the first national meeting to show live surgery, comes from the meeting's own programme. No independent source on file confirms or contradicts it.
- The Aesthetic Surgery Journal fiftieth-anniversary tribute is paywalled; the fifty-year account here rests on the programme rather than on that article.
- No entity called a "Baker Institute" is documented on the meeting's site; the term is not used on this site.
Written by rhinoplasty.cc from the sources linked above, 2026-09-09.