S. S. Badrinath

Sengamedu Srinivasa Badrinath (1940 to 2023) was an Indian ophthalmologist who founded Sankara Nethralaya, one of India's largest charitable eye hospitals, and served as its chairman emeritus. Born in Triplicane, an old neighbourhood of Chennai, he graduated from the Madras Medical College in 1963, trained in the United States, including a residency in ophthalmology at the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Infirmary and a retina fellowship with Charles Schepens at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, and returned to India in 1970 to practise ophthalmology and vitreoretinal surgery in Chennai. In 1978, with a group of philanthropists, he founded the Medical and Vision Research Foundations in Madras, of which Sankara Nethralaya is a unit. He was an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences and received the Padma Shri in 1983 and the Padma Bhushan in 1996. He died on 21 November 2023 at the age of 83.