T. S. Kanaka

Thanjavur Santhanakrishna Kanaka, known as T. S. Kanaka, was an Indian neurosurgeon born in Madras in 1932 who died in Chennai in 2018. She qualified in general surgery in 1963 and took her neurosurgery degree in 1968, and she is recognised as Asia's first female neurosurgeon and one of the first few women in the world to qualify in the field. She was in the surgical team that carried out the first stereotaxic procedures in India, and she was the first neurosurgeon in India to perform chronic electrode implants in the brain, including deep brain stimulation in 1975. She served as a commissioned officer in the Indian Army during the 1962 to 1963 Sino-Indian War and spent most of her career at the Government General Hospital in Madras. After retiring from surgery in 1990 she refused private practice and founded a charitable hospital offering free care to the needy.