Giovanni Battista Monteggia (1762–1815) was an Italian surgeon.[1] Monteggia fracture is named for him.
He began training as a surgeon at age seventeen in Milan. He got his doctorate of medicine in 1789 at University of Pavia. In the same year, his first book, Fasciculi Pathologici, was published. From 1790 he practiced as a surgical assistant, prosector, and prison doctor. In 1795 he was appointed professor of anatomy and surgery, holding a chair of Istituzioni Chirurgiche at University of Pavia. Due to cutting himself during an autopsy, he infected himself with syphilis.
Monteggia was first to describe the Monteggia fracture, a fracture of the proximal third of the ulna with the dislocation of the head of radius.