The European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO) was founded in 1981, alongside the emergence of more conservative strategies in cancer surgery and increasingly positive results from the integration of radiotherapy and chemotherapy in cancer treatment.

In the late 1970s, a group of visionary radiation oncology specialists—Klaas Breur, Jerzy Einhorn, Michael Peckham, Maurice Tubiana, and Emmanuel van der Schueren—began discussing the creation of a new multidisciplinary scientific society.

In 1966, Paul Carbone at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Bethesda, pioneered the concept of «adjuvant chemotherapy» - using drugs after radical mastectomy to prevent recurrence. By 1972, Carbone shared promising results of the CMF regimen (cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, fluorouracil) with Italian oncologist Gianni Bonadonna, leading to their collaboration.