Rüdiger Becker was chair of oral and maxillofacial surgery and director of the centre for dentistry, oral and maxillofacial medicine at Westphalian Wilhelms University, Münster, Germany. He was born in 1927. At Münster he was also vice dean and then dean of the medical faculty. He was primarily focused on the treatment of jaw growth disorders and the reconstruction of jaws and facial defects, and wrote more than 100 publications on these subjects, as well as contributing to books and lecturing worldwide. He was president of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Mund-, Kiefer- und Gesichtschirurgie. He was accepted into the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina and gained his fellowship of the faculty of dental surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1988. Rüdiger Becker died in 2004.