Dr. Prabhu Dayal Nigam (c. 1933 – 2021) was a pioneering Indian interventional cardiologist and medical academic who founded the Department of Cardiology at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital (formerly Willingdon Hospital) in New Delhi. He played a key role in developing modern cardiac care and interventional techniques in India.

He earned his MBBS from King George’s Medical College, Lucknow, in 1959, followed by an MD and membership of the Academy of Medical Sciences (MAMS). He then completed a Commonwealth Fellowship in cardiology at Guy’s Hospital in London. Returning to India in 1968, he established and headed the cardiology department at Lady Hardinge Medical College and the associated Willingdon Hospital (now Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital), serving as its head until 1990. There he introduced and refined key interventional procedures at a time when specialised cardiac services were still limited in the country.

“Cardiology is not only about treating the heart that is already failing,” he would tell younger colleagues. “It is about preventing that failure and giving patients a chance to live fully again.”

Later he joined Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals in New Delhi as Senior Consultant in Interventional Cardiology, where he continued practising percutaneous coronary interventions, carotid interventions and related procedures. He was a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology and of the Cardiological Society of India.

Nigam served as Honorary Physician to the President of India and as Honorary Consultant Cardiologist to the Armed Forces of India. He was a member of selection committees of the Union Public Service Commission, Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission and Banaras Hindu University, and sat on committees of the Indian Council of Medical Research, the University Grants Commission and the Academic Council of the University of Delhi. The World Health Organization included him on its expert panel on hypertension.

In recognition of his contributions he received the Dr. B.C. Roy National Award in 1983—the highest Indian honour in the medical category—and the Padma Shri in 1987.

Dr. Prabhu Dayal Nigam passed away in July 2021 after a brief illness. He is remembered as one of the early builders of interventional cardiology in India, a teacher who helped train successive generations of cardiologists, and a clinician whose work expanded access to advanced heart care in both public and private institutions. His legacy lives on in the department he founded and in the many patients whose lives were extended by the techniques he helped establish.