In the long tradition of Indian medicine that reached outward for training and then returned to serve at home, Samiran Nundy stands as one of the defining figures of gastrointestinal surgery. Born in India into a family already connected with the profession—his father had been a distinguished surgeon—he travelled early to England. He studied medicine at Cambridge University and Guy’s Hospital, London, completed residency at Hammersmith Hospital, and refined his surgical skills at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge and later at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Along the way he taught at Cambridge, London and Harvard, absorbing the best of Western surgical practice while never losing sight of the needs of India.

In 1975 he returned permanently and joined the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. There he founded and built the Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery and Liver Transplantation, becoming its first professor and later its head. For more than two decades he trained a generation of surgeons who would go on to lead units across India and beyond. In 1996 he moved to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, where he established the Department of Surgical Gastroenterology and Liver Transplantation and continued as Emeritus Consultant. Between 1996 and 2005 his team performed 241 consecutive liver resections—an experience carefully documented and published so that others could learn from it.

Beyond the operating theatre he helped draft the Transplantation of Human Organs Act of 1995, the landmark legislation that recognised brain death and made ethical organ donation possible in India. He founded and edited the National Medical Journal of India and Tropical Gastroenterology, insisting that Indian research must meet international standards of honesty and rigour. He also wrote and spoke widely for the public, believing that medical knowledge should not remain locked inside hospitals.

One younger colleague once asked him why he had left the comforts of Cambridge and Harvard for the heavier burdens of Indian public institutions.

Dr. Nundy answered with characteristic directness, “The best training is useless if it stays abroad. The patients who need it most are here. So we come back and build.”

In 1985 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri. He later received the Dr. B.C. Roy National Award twice and a Lifetime Achievement Award from AIIMS. He has served as President of AIIMS Rishikesh and continues as a trustee and adviser, still shaping policy and standards.

In the history of Indian surgery Samiran Nundy is remembered as the man who brought modern gastrointestinal and liver surgery to institutional maturity, who insisted on ethical organ transplantation, and who never stopped writing, teaching and operating so that the next generation would stand on firmer ground.