Daher Cutait was nominated the 'Father of Latin-American Colo-Proctology' by the Latin-American Colo-Proctology Association. He was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1913, and was educated at the University of São Paulo. After graduating in 1939, he won a scholarship provided by the Institute of International Education of New York, and later by the Kellogg Foundation of Michigan and the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau, to study in the United States. He worked with Green Carter and Whipple at Presbyterian Hospital, New York, and then moved to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor under Frederick Coller. Towards the end of his three years he visited the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Lahey Clinic, Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic. He returned to Brazil as an academic surgeon in the University of São Paulo-Hospital das Clínicas, becoming in 1947 head of colo-proctology, a post he retained until he retired in 1983. His service became one of the most prestigious in the world and he trained hundreds of surgeons from South America and elsewhere. He published three textbooks on surgery of the bowel and intensive care, and was much sought-after as a visiting professor all over the world. His most important contribution to the speciality was the 'pull-through' operation for cancer of the rectum and the megacolon caused by Chagas' disease, which he developed independently and at the same time as Rupert Turnbull. He was President of the Brazilian Society of Colo-Proctology, the Brazilian College of Surgeons, the Latin-American Surgical Federation, the International Society of University Colon and Rectal Surgeons, and the Brazilian chapter of the American College of Surgeons. He presided over the World Congress of Colo-Proctology in 1986. He was awarded honorary fellowships of innumerable international medical societies. In Brazil an annual Cutait oration was founded in his honour. In the early 1960s he established and directed the Hospital Sirio Libanes, a not-for-profit institution that became a referral centre for complex cases. He married Yvonne in 1948, and had four children, one of whom followed him into surgery. There are ten grandchildren. His autobiography, *A doctor; a life*, was published in 2000. He died on 6 June 2001.