Victor Alexander Haden Horsley (April 14, 1857 - July 16, 1916) was an accomplished English scientist and professor. He was educated at Cranbrook School, Kent, and studied medicine at University College London and in Berlin, Germany (1881), and in the same year started his career as a house surgeon and registrar at the University College Hospital. In 1886, he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Surgery at the National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy, and as a Professor of Pathology (1887-96) and Professor of Clinical Surgery (1899-1902) at University College London. He was a supporter for women's suffrage, and was an opponent of tobacco and alcohol. Horsley was the first physician to remove a spinal tumor, in 1887, by means of a laminectomy. He developed many practical neurosurgical techniques, including the hemostatic bone wax, the skin flap, the ligation of the carotid artery to treat cerebral aneurysms, the transcranial approach to the pituitary gland and the intradural division of the trigeminal nerve root for the surgical treatment of trigeminal neuralgia. He volunteered for field surgery duty in Mesopotamia, where he died unexpectedly in 1916, of heatstroke and severe hyperpyrexia, at the age of 59.