In Gujarat, on 8 August 1941, a girl named Lata was born. She studied medicine at B.J. Medical College and, after marrying Dr. Anil Desai in 1968, the young couple travelled to the United States in 1972 for higher studies. Lata specialised in paediatrics; Anil in surgery. A comfortable life abroad was within reach. They […]

In Mumbai in 1940, a boy named Vijaykumar Vinayak Dongre was born. He grew up to become a doctor, but he chose a path few others willingly walked: the care of people affected by leprosy, a disease still wrapped in fear and stigma. For nearly thirty-five years he served as Medical Superintendent of Acworth Leprosy […]

In the town of Vidisha in 1932, a boy named Narendra Prasad Misra was born. He ranked first in his university B.Sc., then earned his MBBS and MD from Gajra Raja Medical College in Gwalior. Further training took him to London as a Commonwealth Scholar and to the National Institutes of Health in the United […]

In the coastal town of Bhimavaram in West Godavari district, on 30 June 1939, a boy named Sunkara Venkata Adinarayana Rao was born to freedom-fighter parents. He studied at ULCM High School, then earned his MBBS in 1966 and MS in Orthopaedics in 1970 from Andhra Medical College, Visakhapatnam. Advanced training in microvascular and hand […]

In Chennai on 10 March 1938, a boy named Veeraswamy Seshiah was born. He completed his MBBS at Madras Medical College in 1962, served in the Army Medical Corps during the Indo-Pakistani War—earning the Samar Seva Star—and later returned to earn his MD. Teaching and clinical work followed at Stanley and Madras Medical Colleges. In […]

In the hill station of Mount Abu on 23 January 1933, a boy named Bhim Sen Singhal was born. He studied at Maharaja’s College in Jaipur, then moved to Mumbai for medicine at Grant Medical College and the Sir J.J. Group of Hospitals. After earning his MBBS and MD he travelled to London for advanced […]

In Maharashtra on 28 June 1940, a boy named Balaji Tambe was born to the Vedic scholar Shri Vasudeo Tambe Shastri. From childhood he absorbed the language of the scriptures and the healing wisdom of Ayurveda. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering in 1960 and, four years later, the title of Ayurveda Vaidya Visharad. […]

In the village of Madanpur in Siddharthnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, a boy named Kamlakar Tripathi was born. He grew up to become a physician of quiet dedication, eventually joining the Institute of Medical Sciences at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi. He specialised in medicine and nephrology, rising to become Professor and Head of the […]

In what is now Kishoreganj, Bangladesh, on 12 November 1934, a boy named Dilip Mahalanabis was born. He studied medicine at Calcutta Medical College, trained further in London and Edinburgh, and became a paediatrician with a special interest in diarrhoeal diseases. In 1966 he joined the Johns Hopkins University research centre in Calcutta, studying oral […]

In the Punjab province of undivided India, on 16 January 1946, a boy named Munishwar Chandar Dawar was born. Partition forced his family across the new border. He grew up in Jalandhar, studied hard, and earned his MBBS from the medical college in Jabalpur in 1967. When war came in 1971 he joined the Army […]

In the town of Ghatal in West Midnapore, West Bengal, a boy named Ratan Chandra Kar grew up with a quiet determination to serve. He studied medicine at Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College in Kolkata, graduating in the early 1980s, and began his career in the northeast, working among tribes such as the Konyak in […]

In Telangana a young woman named Nalini chose the path of medicine and specialised in the care of children. She joined the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research—JIPMER—in Puducherry, rose to become Professor and later Head of the Department of Paediatrics, and taught generations of young doctors. During her years at JIPMER she […]

In Hyderabad a young paediatrician named Hanumantha Rao Pasupuleti looked at the children society preferred to hide. In the 1970s families often kept children with intellectual or physical disabilities out of sight. Few doctors offered specialised care. He decided that acceptance had to begin somewhere. In 1977 he founded a small centre and gave it […]

In the Midnapore district of West Bengal, on 2 March 1953, a boy named Manoranjan Sahu was born. He chose the path of Ayurveda and graduated from the State Ayurvedic College in 1977. Postgraduate studies and a doctorate followed at Banaras Hindu University, where he would spend the greater part of his working life. He […]

In Tamil Nadu a young man named Gopalsamy Veluchamy chose the ancient path of Siddha medicine. He was among the first generation to earn formal degrees in the system—BIM and MD (Siddha)—and stepped into teaching and practice at a time when traditional knowledge needed both protection and careful modern support. In 1970 he began as […]

In a family that valued learning, Ishwar Chander Verma was born on 25 December 1936. He studied medicine, trained in East Africa and the United Kingdom, and returned to India with a clear vision: the new science of genetics could transform the care of children and families facing inherited disorders. In 1967 he joined the […]

In Surat, Gujarat, on 3 March 1939, a boy named Ashwin Balachand Mehta was born. He studied medicine at King Edward Memorial Hospital and Seth G.S. Medical College in Mumbai, collecting nineteen gold medals along the way, and chose the young specialty of cardiology at a time when heart disease was still largely managed with […]

In Ahmedabad, Gujarat, a bright student named Tejas Madhusudan Patel earned his medical degrees with gold medals from B.J. Medical College. He specialised in cardiology and soon turned his attention to a safer, more precise way of opening blocked heart arteries—approaching them through the wrist rather than the groin. At a time when transradial angioplasty […]

In the village of Dubaha in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar, on 3 September 1931, a boy named Chandreshwar Prasad Thakur was born. He topped the MBBS examination at Patna Medical College in 1957, collecting gold medals along the way, and later earned his MRCP from Edinburgh and London. He returned home to serve as Professor […]

In 1950 a little girl named Prema was born with a clear, melodious voice and dreams of becoming a singer. At the age of eight a kitchen stove exploded, covering half her body—especially her face and neck—in severe burns. She spent long months in Christian Medical College, Vellore, enduring fourteen reconstructive surgeries. Her voice was […]

In the vast tapestry of India’s healthcare story—woven through the lives of the doctors who founded great institutions and received the nation’s highest civilian honours—there walks a quieter sisterhood. The nurses. They do not always stand in the bright lights of operating theatres named after Padma-decorated pioneers. Yet without them, those theatres would fall silent. […]

Dr Duvvur Nageshwar ReddyPadma Shri, 2002 · Padma Bhushan, 2016 · Padma Vibhushan, 2025 — GastroenterologyThe first Indian doctor to receive all three Padma awards. Visakhapatnam, late 1950s. A boy from a house of pathologists wanted to know how petrol made a car move. He poured a little into a tin in the family garage, […]

Dr Jose Chacko PeriappuramPadma Shri, 2011 · Padma Bhushan, 2025 — Cardiothoracic SurgeryThe man who gave Kerala its first transplanted heart — and India its first second chance. South Paravur, Ernakulam. A botanist’s son who took first rank in BSc Botany at St Thomas College, Pala, then walked into Government Medical College, Kottayam, and decided […]

Prof. (Dr) Ashok Kumar MahapatraPadma Shri, 2025 — NeurosurgeryThe village boy from Puri who separated two heads that the world said could not be parted. Biranarasinghpur, Puri district. Four uncles were engineers. His father, Nabakishore, wanted the same for the boy. Then an uncle in a white coat walked into the house, and the boy […]

Dr Budhendra Kumar JainPadma Shri, 2025 — Ophthalmology5 December 1948 – 27 February 2026The man who turned a twelve-bed clinic in a jungle into a factory of light. Satna, a business household. A child watching Saint Ranchhoddasji Maharaj’s eye camps — hundreds of cataracts cut in a week, in a place with no electricity, no […]

Dr Hemant KumarPadma Shri, 2025 — NephrologyBihar’s first DM nephrologist, and the man who treated kidneys as if they belonged to family. Jamalpur, Munger — a modest house. A schoolboy who went with his parents to hospitals and saw people waiting without hope. He decided then that medicine would be the way he served. MBBS […]

Dr (Prof.) Neerja BhatlaPadma Shri, 2025 — Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Gynaecologic OncologyThe first Indian to chair FIGO’s gynaecologic oncology committee — and the woman who spent thirty-five years trying to make cervical cancer unnecessary. Born 2 January 1959. MBBS from AIIMS Delhi in 1982, MD in 1985, faculty from 1989. She rose to Professor and […]

Prof. Soniya NityanandPadma Shri, 2025 — Clinical Haematology and Stem Cell TransplantationIndia’s first woman bone-marrow transplant specialist — and the daughter who brought a second Padma Shri into the same Lucknow house. 6 September 1962, Lucknow. Her father, Dr Nitya Anand, had crossed from West Punjab at Partition and spent a lifetime at CDRI inventing […]

In the winter of 2026, when the Republic Day honours were announced and later conferred by President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan, fifteen names from the world of medicine and healing stood out among the 131 Padma Awards. Two received the Padma Bhushan. Thirteen received the Padma Shri. Together they formed a living map of […]

Dr Kallipatti Ramasamy PalaniswamyPadma Shri, 2007 · Padma Bhushan, 2026 — GastroenterologyThe boy from Kallipatti who built North Chennai a stomach department — then spent forty years teaching the country how to look inside it without cutting it open. 15 March 1949, Kallipatti, Erode — an agricultural house, a remote village. MBBS from Mysore University […]

Dr Dattatreyudu NoriPadma Shri, 2015 · Padma Bhushan, 2026 — Radiation OncologyThe village boy from Mantada who taught the world to place radiation inside a tumour — and then came home to tell two Telugu states that some cancers need not arrive at all. 1947, Mantada, Krishna district. Schooling in Machilipatnam. MBBS from Kurnool Medical […]

Dr Armida FernandezPadma Shri, 2026 — Neonatology and Urban Public HealthThe mother of Indian neonatology — the woman who taught a municipal hospital how to keep a premature baby alive, then walked out of the air-conditioned ward and into Dharavi. Born Armida Menezes in Dharwad, 1942 or 1943, daughter of the Goan poet-civil servant Armando […]

Dr Guduru Venkat RaoPadma Shri, 2026 — Surgical GastroenterologyThe Hyderabad boy who almost became a vet — then took an appendix out through the mouth, and taught a generation that a scar is not the price of a life. Born 15 June 1960, middle-class Hyderabad, one sister, three brothers. Hyderabad Public School, Ramanthapur, class of […]

Dr H. V. HandePadma Shri, 2026 — MedicineNinety-eight years old, three hours a day in Shenoy Nagar, still treating whoever walks in — and still covering the bus fare home. 28 November 1927, Coimbatore. One of ten children of a government surgeon under the Raj; ancestral roots in Kota Handattu, near Udupi, and Mangalore. School […]

Dr Padma GurmetPadma Shri, 2026 — Sowa-Rigpa (Medicine)The Amchi’s son who was reluctant to inherit the pulse of the high desert — and then made that pulse an official system of Indian medicine. Born 15 April 1971, Ladakh. Before hospitals reached the plateau, healthcare lived in the family. His father was an Amchi — a […]

Dr Natesan PunniamurthyPadma Shri, 2026 — Veterinary Medicine (Ethno-Veterinary Science)The farm boy from Vallam who taught a cow to heal with aloe, turmeric and lime — and taught a nation that clean milk begins in a clean udder, not a bottle of antibiotic. 6 March 1957, Vallam village, Thanjavur. Agrarian house. School in Thanjavur and […]

Dr Kewal Krishan ThakralPadma Shri, 2026 — Ayurvedic Surgery (Shalya–Shalakya)The Partition child who made a medicated thread, and a small puncture at the ear, acceptable to a country that had almost forgotten its own surgeons. Born 10 October 1938, Sargodha — then British India, now Pakistan. The family crossed in 1947 and rebuilt in Yamunanagar. […]

Dr Palkonda Vijay Anand ReddyPadma Shri, 2026 — OncologyThe Palamuru boy who turned down a London job, came home after his father died, and spent three decades telling parents that even the eye can grow a cancer — and that a white glow in a photograph can still be caught in time. Born 20 October […]

Dr Prateek SharmaPadma Shri, 2026 — GastroenterologyThe Vadodara graduate who made Barrett’s oesophagus a language the world could share — Prague criteria on the scope, risk on the page — and then came home, briefly, to take a medal for a life spent in Kansas City. Born in Chandigarh; raised in Vadodara. Parents from Punjab […]

Dr Ramchandra Godbole and Smt Suneeta GodbolePadma Shri, 2026 — Medicine (joint award)Seven days after the wedding they left Maharashtra for Barsur. The forest called him Doctor Bhaiya. She learned Gondi and Halbi so the women would not have to speak through a stranger. He is a BAMS graduate from Satara. She took her MSW […]

Prof. Shyam SundarPadma Shri, 2026 — Medicine (Infectious Diseases / Kala-azar)The Muzaffarpur boy who gave a neglected fever a strip test, an oral pill, and a single drip — and watched the case count fall from tens of thousands to a few hundred. Born 30 November 1953, Muzaffarpur. District school. Banaras Hindu University for everything […]

Dr Suresh HanagavadiPadma Shri, 2026 — Medicine (Haemophilia care)The Class 9 boy outside a Harihar OPD whose uncle said, This is why you must become a doctor — and who spent the first internship salary registering a society so no family would lose someone for lack of care. Severe haemophilia B from childhood. Mother a […]

Prof. (Dr) Saroj MandalPadma Shri, 2026 — Interventional CardiologyThe Kolkata unit head who put twenty-two pacemakers in in nine hours on an ordinary working day at SSKM — and spent the rest of the years taking the same urgency to the village by wire. Born 15 September 1967. MBBS, University of Calcutta, 1994. MD Medicine. […]

Pune in the early 1950s still treated psychiatry as something whispered about in corridors. Hospitals had wards. Families had secrets. Women doctors were rare enough. A woman who wanted to sit across from patients in her own consulting room, listen to their fears, and charge a fee for it? That was almost unthinkable. Roshen Master […]