A Pioneer of Corneal Surgery and Eye Banking: The Story of Prof. Madan Mohan

Born on 14 May 1929 in Mardan (then in the North-West Frontier Province) into a family of doctors, Madan Mohan grew up watching his father, a physician and eye surgeon, run a 50-bed eye hospital. His grandfather and uncles were also doctors. Ophthalmology, he later said with a smile, “was in my genes.”

After the Partition the family moved to India. He studied at King George’s Medical College, Lucknow, where he shone both in academics and sports, earning his MBBS in 1954 and MS in Ophthalmology soon after. He joined the faculty there briefly before moving in 1960 to the newly established All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi.

In 1963–64 a Rockefeller Fellowship took him to the United Kingdom, France and the United States to study corneal transplantation and eye banking. Mentored especially by Sir Benjamin Rycroft, he returned determined to build the specialty in India. At AIIMS he established the National Eye Bank and the Cornea Unit—the first of their kind in the country—and trained generations of corneal surgeons. Under his leadership the Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences grew into one of the largest and most respected eye institutes in Asia, with modern operating theatres, residency programmes in microsurgery and intraocular-lens implantation, and strong community-ophthalmology outreach.

He served as Chief of the R.P. Centre from 1979 to 1989, as Honorary Surgeon to the President of India, and as Advisor in Ophthalmology to the Government of India (1980–91). He played a key role in the passage of the Eye Donation Act and in national blindness-control programmes. Over 150 scientific papers, countless successful corneal grafts, and the training of ophthalmologists from every corner of India marked his career.

After retirement he founded the M.M. Eyetech Institute in New Delhi, where he continued to practise and teach. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri in 1985 for his outstanding contributions to ophthalmology and the fight against blindness.

Prof. Madan Mohan passed away on 7 June 2021. Those who knew him remember a meticulous surgeon, a generous teacher and a quiet Karmayogi who spent a lifetime giving the gift of sight. His work lives on in the National Eye Bank, in the surgeons he trained, and in every cornea transplanted because he refused to accept that blindness was inevitable.