Alfred Washington Adson was born in Iowa, America, in 1887. After completing his science degree at the University of Nebraska in 1912 and MD from the University of Pennsylvania, Alfred began his career as a General Surgeon at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in 1914. Alfred was also a member of the US Army during WWI, serving as a lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Core. Taking a strong interest in the developing specialty of Neurosurgery, Adson was a founding member, and future president of The Society of Neurological Surgeons, which is the oldest Neurosurgical Society in the world. He had a lasting influence in the Neurosurgical specialty, with his name being associated with a medical condition, sign, and diagnostic manoeuvre in the field. Perhaps Adson’s most widely known association however, is the tissue forceps that bare his name. The Adson tissue forceps are a fine thumb forceps, and were designed to allow for fine tissue dissecting, obviously important in the field of Neurosurgery, but has since been widely adopted across other surgical specialties. Both variants of the forceps are designed to help with non-traumatic tissue dissection, with the non-toothed variant primarily used to grasp delicate tissues, and the toothed (or ‘rat-toothed’) variant used for more dense tissue such as skin and fascia. Alfred Adson was clearly an influential person in the history of Neurosurgery, but he also represents a great example of the influence that surgical sub-specialties can have on one another, and it’s importance.