Neil Fonseka was foundation professor of surgery at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. A twin, he was born in Colombo on 19 July 1940, the son of Merrennage Gilbert Thomas Fonseka, a clerical officer, and Eugene Wilta Fonseka a school teacher. He was educated at St Matthew’s College, Dematagoda, and Ananda College, where he was an excellent student and also won prizes for sports. He qualified with second class honours from the University of Colombo and won distinctions in microbiology, pathology and obstetrics and gynaecology, as well as the Loos gold medal for pathology. After junior posts he went to England, where he worked at St Peter’s, St Mark’s and St Bartholomew’s hospitals in London and was senior registrar at Charing Cross and King Edward VII Hospital, Windsor. In 1976 he was appointed surgeon to the prosthetic and vascular centre at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham, and, in 1978, surgeon-in-charge at the prosthetic and vascular centre at Brighton Hospital. In 1980 he returned to Sri Lanka to become the foundation professor in surgery at the new University of Ruhuna. There he threw himself into the life of the university, taking a keen interest in student welfare, becoming a member of the senate and council of the university and dean of the faculty of medicine from 1988 to 1989, during horrifying days of terrorism. He founded the Ruhuna University Medical Students Alumni Association, the Galle branches of the Jaipur Foot Project and the Cancer Society, and was president of the Galle Medical Association in 1985. He was interested in cricket, tennis, chess, bridge, poker, singing, watching films, reading classics and fiction, and jokes. He owned an estate where he cultivated coconuts. He married Pushpa, a professor of community medicine at the University of Ruhuna, who cared for him devotedly during his long and disabling last illness. He died on 15 May 2005.