It was founded by Maurice E. Müller, Emeritus Professor of the University of Bern (Switzerland), Doctor Honoris Causa by 14 Universities, of which the first one was the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is Former President of the International Society of Orthopaedic Surgery being currently Honorary Member of several societies, among them the Sociedad Española de Cirugía Ortopédica y Traumatología and the Sociedad Española de Cirugía de Cadera. During the fifties, Professor Müller started to develop techniques and surgical instruments that are now being used world wide for the treatment of fractures by Internal Fixation and the Prosthetic Hip Surgery. He is the author of the most widely used total hip prosthesis model.

He is also the author of the "Manual of Internal Fixation", a basic book in modern Orthopaedics, transalted into seven languages, with several editions each. He established the Association for the Study of Osteosynthesis (AO-ASIF), that has delivered international courses in which more than 100,000 surgeons and 80,000 nurses have participated. He has developed the Comprehensive Classification of Fractures (CCF), the International Documentation and Evaluation System (IDES) and has been Chairman of the SICOT Presidential Commission for Documentation and Evaluation, created in 1988 by Sir Dennis Paterson.