In the town of Shikohabad in Uttar Pradesh, on 14 June 1941, a boy named Jitendra Nath Pande was born into a family of teachers. From an early age he showed a quiet brilliance. When he joined the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in its early years, classmates already spoke of him as one of the brightest minds in the batch. He graduated at the top, completed his MD in Medicine in 1966, and never left the institution that had shaped him.

He specialised in the lungs—the organ that keeps us alive with every breath. In 1979 he travelled to the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm to master fibre-optic bronchoscopy. When he returned, he performed the first such procedure in India, opening a new window into the airways of patients who had long suffered in silence.

At AIIMS he rose steadily. By 1989 he was a professor; by 1993 he headed the Department of Medicine, one of the youngest to hold the post. He established the institute’s first medical intensive care unit, bringing modern critical care to northern India. Students remember him as a teacher who could diagnose with uncanny precision and still take time to explain every step.

One junior doctor once asked after a long ward round, “Sir, how do you always seem to know what the patient needs before the reports arrive?”

Jitendra smiled. “Listen carefully. The patient tells you everything if you give them time. The machines only confirm what the eyes and ears already know.”

His research reached far beyond the hospital. A landmark study he led in the late 1990s showed that rising air pollution in Delhi caused a clear spike in emergency visits for asthma, lung disease and heart attacks. The findings helped the Supreme Court order the shift from diesel buses to cleaner fuels—a decision that still shapes the city’s air.

He treated presidents, prime ministers and film stars with the same quiet care he gave the poorest patient in the queue. After retiring from AIIMS in 2003 he continued seeing patients at Sitaram Bhartia Institute, often fifty a day, until the very end.

In May 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, he contracted COVID-19 and passed away peacefully in his sleep. The following year the nation awarded him the Padma Shri posthumously for his lifelong contribution to medicine.

Those who trained under him still speak of the same qualities: sharp intellect, deep compassion, and an unshakable belief that every breath matters. From the classrooms of AIIMS to the polluted skies of Delhi, Dr. Jitendra Nath Pande spent a lifetime helping India breathe a little easier.