In the medical landscape of independent India, few physicians shaped the specialty of gastroenterology as decisively as Badri Nath Tandon. Born on 1 August 1931 into a Khatri family, he completed his MBBS and MD at King George’s Medical College, Lucknow. Seeking deeper knowledge, he travelled to Harvard Medical School for advanced training in gastroenterology and then to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for studies in human nutrition. When he returned, he carried both technical skill and a clear sense of purpose.

In 1962 he joined the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, as a faculty member in the Department of Medicine. There he founded the Department of Gastroenterology in 1973 and established the country’s first formal DM training programme in the specialty. Under his leadership the department became a national and regional centre of excellence in gastroenterology, hepatology and clinical nutrition. He trained scores of specialists who later headed units across India and beyond. His research ranged from the epidemiology of liver disease in the tropics to practical interventions in child nutrition; he published more than two hundred scientific papers, several textbooks and monographs that remained standard references for decades.

After retiring from AIIMS in 1991 he continued as Director of the Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute and later as Chairman of the Metro Centre for Liver and Digestive Diseases in Noida. He also founded the Digestive Diseases Foundation of India and maintained a charitable outpatient clinic in Mathura almost until the end of his life.

One of his former students once asked him why he had devoted so much energy to building departments and training programmes rather than simply practising.

Professor Tandon answered, “A single good doctor can treat a few hundred patients. A good department can train doctors who treat thousands. The work multiplies.”

In 1986 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan. He also received the Sasakawa WHO Health Prize, the Jubilee Medal of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and lifetime achievement awards from the Indian Medical Association and the Indian Society of Gastroenterology. He served as President of the International Association for the Study of the Liver and of the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver.

Badri Nath Tandon died in New Delhi on 5 March 2018. In the history of Indian medicine he is remembered as the physician who gave gastroenterology institutional form, scientific depth and a lasting commitment to the nutritional health of ordinary people.