The Guardian of Sight for the Millions

On 9 July 1940, in a small agricultural hamlet in Theni district of Tamil Nadu, Perumalsamy Namperumalsamy was born. He graduated MBBS from Madurai Medical College and pursued advanced training in the United States, becoming India’s first specialist in retina and vitreous surgery. A postgraduate fellow of the University of Illinois, Chicago, he returned home determined to bring the highest standards of eye care to ordinary people.

In 1971 he established India’s first Low-Vision Aid Centre at the Government Rajaji Hospital in Madurai. He later founded the Vitreous Surgery Centre there—the first of its kind in the country—and, in 1979, the Retina-Vitreous Clinic at the newly opened Aravind Eye Hospital. Joining Aravind in its earliest days, he rose to become Director and then Chairman. Under his leadership the hospital grew from a modest 11-bed facility into the world’s largest eye-care system, performing millions of surgeries—many of them free or heavily subsidised—while maintaining rigorous quality and financial sustainability. TIME magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010, praising the “assembly-line efficiency” he brought to eye surgery without ever compromising compassion.

He specialised in diabetic retinopathy, trained generations of ophthalmologists, championed research, and helped create Aurolab, which made intraocular lenses affordable across the developing world. An elected Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, he received the Padma Shri in 2007. Under his chairmanship Aravind was awarded the prestigious Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize.

Married to Dr. G. Natchiar (sister of Aravind’s founder Dr. G. Venkataswamy) and the father of two sons, Dr. Nam remained a quiet, disciplined teacher and clinician until the end. He passed away in Madurai on 24 July 2025 at the age of eighty-five.

In the operating theatres of Aravind, in the vision centres that reach remote villages, and in the countless eyes restored to sight, the legacy of Dr. P. Namperumalsamy endures: the simple conviction that every person—rich or poor—has a right to see the world clearly.