The Father of Indian Neurosurgery: The Story of Prof. Balasubramaniam Ramamurthi

On 30 January 1922, in the small town of Sirkazhi (then Shiyali) in Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu, a son was born to Captain T. S. Balasubramaniam, an assistant surgeon in the government hospital, and his wife Balambal. The child was named Balasubramaniam Ramamurthi. From his earliest years the boy watched his father treat patients and decided that medicine would be his path too.

He studied at ER High School in Tiruchirappalli and then entered Madras Medical College. In 1943 he graduated with the Johnstone Gold Medal as the best outgoing student. He completed his MS in General Surgery in 1947 and sailed to Britain, where he obtained the FRCS from Edinburgh. The Government of Madras then sent him for specialised training in neurosurgery—at a time when the specialty barely existed in India. He trained under G. F. Rowbotham in Newcastle and spent time with the great masters of the age: Geoffrey Jefferson in Manchester, Hugo Krayenbühl in Zurich, Eduard Busch in Copenhagen, Herbert Olivecrona in Stockholm, and Wilder Penfield at the Montreal Neurological Institute.

On 24 October 1950—Vijayadashami day—Dr. B. Ramamurthi returned to Madras and formally joined the Government General Hospital and Madras Medical College as Assistant Surgeon in Neurosurgery. With almost no equipment and little institutional support, he began building a department from scratch. It was only the second organised neurosurgical unit in India, following Jacob Chandy’s pioneering work at Christian Medical College, Vellore, by a few months. Over the next three decades he transformed that modest beginning into the Madras Institute of Neurology—modelled consciously on Penfield’s Montreal institute—bringing neurosurgery, neurology, neuroradiology, neuropathology and neurochemistry under one roof.

In 1960, together with colleagues V. Balasubramaniam, S. Kalyanaraman, T. S. Kanaka and neurologists G. Arjundas and K. Jagannathan, he established one of India’s earliest stereotactic surgery programmes. The “Madras School of Stereotaxy” gained international recognition for its work on movement disorders, epilepsy, pain and certain psychiatric conditions. He trained generations of neurosurgeons, published more than three hundred scientific papers, co-edited major textbooks of neurosurgery, and served as founding secretary of the Neurological Society of India and founding editor of its journal, Neurology India.

He rose to become Professor and Head of the Institute of Neurology and Principal of Madras Medical College. After retiring from government service in 1978 he founded the Dr. A. Lakshmipathi Neurosurgical Centre at the Voluntary Health Services Hospital in Adyar, named after his father-in-law, and continued operating and teaching there until the end of his life. He also played a key role in the establishment of the National Brain Research Centre at Manesar.

The nation recognised his work with the Padma Shri in 1972 and the Padma Bhushan in 1977. He received the Dhanvantari Award, the John Bruce Gold Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and was made an Honorary Brigadier in the Indian Army and Honorary Surgeon to the President of India. In 1989 he was elected Honorary President of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies.

Prof. Ramamurthi was married to Indira; they had two sons, Vijayaraghavan and Ravi. He remained active into his eighties, still operating, still teaching, still dreaming of better brain research for India. On 13 December 2003 he passed away at the age of eighty-one.

Today he is universally remembered as the Father of Indian Neurosurgery. The institutions he built, the surgeons he trained, and the standards he set continue to shape the specialty across the country. In his autobiography he quoted Horace: “I have erected a monument more lasting than bronze…” For countless patients whose lives were saved or restored by Indian neurosurgery, and for every young surgeon who still walks the path he first cleared, that monument stands firm.